Plastic is one of the most dangerous and threatening wastes for animals. Often animals eat plastic waste which stuck in their digestive system and leads to their death. One such similar and shocking instances happened in Tamil Nadu.
In Chennai, P. Munirathanam visited the Veterinary and Animal Sciences University with his ill cow who delivered calf just 20 days ago. He informed vets about the cow’s situation. Munirathanam said cow often kicks in stomach and yields only 3 liters milk a day. He also complained about cow’s difficulty it faced in passing stool and urine.
Vets examined the cow and after a few tests, they found out that the digestive system is covered with plastic waste.
P. Selvaraj, the Professor of Veterinary Clinical Medicine — “We could feel the presence of plastics even during a manual rectal examination. Plastics waste could have accumulated in the rumen over a period of two years.”
“We conducted an x-ray and followed it up with an ultrasound scan and found that plastics occupied 75% of the rumen, one of the four chambers of the cow’s stomach.”
Once the diagnosis was clear, we decided to perform a procedure to remove the accumulated plastics waste. The surgery started at 11:30 am and went on for five hours till 04:30 pm. 52 kgs of plastic was removed from the cow’s belly.
Assistant professor of surgery A. Velavan, a vet from the team who performed the surgery said — “It was a long and complicated surgery. Since the wastes were attached to the walls of the rumen, we had to be very careful that we do not damage the wall.”
A few pins and needles were also found in the waste removed from the cow’s body. Another surgeon R. Sivasankar said — “In some cases, the needle could prove dangerous to the animal as it could move to the heart.”
The cow is currently undergoing treatment in Vepery and would soon be on its way to recovery.
According to the doctors, it took about two years for all that plastic to accumulate.
“It exemplifies the threat to animals posed by plastics discarded indiscriminately by the public. Even though we have removed plastics from cows in the past, the quantity this time — 52 kg — is unprecedented,” said S. Balasubramanian, Director, Clinics at TANUVAS.
