SCHENECTADY â The state Department of Agriculture and Markets is looking into complaints that animals at two ethnic meat and poultry markets in the city are being kept in overcrowded and filthy conditions that may pose a health threat to customers.
Dr. Sarah Madaio, a veterinarian and medical director of the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society in Menands, said she was appalled when she went to the Abduallah Halal market on Broadway Friday to buy a pet chicken and discovered dozens of the birds wallowing in feces and urine with some of them dead.
She called the conditions animal cruelty and said she reported it to police and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She also took video and pictures with her cell phone to document the conditions.
Shareeza Ali, owner of Abduallah Halal, called the allegations a lie and accused Madaio and another woman who accompanied the veterinarian of "harassment on me as I try to make my daily bread."
"There is nothing like animal cruelty here," Ali said angrily. "At no time as a merchant will I have live and dead chickens or ducks together and have my customers see that. It doesn't make sense."
She said the only time there might be a dead animal with the live ones is if it dies while being delivered. When that happens, Ali said, she immediately discards the animal.
Ali explained her customers generally go into a back room to select the animal from a cage before it's weighed on a scale, butchered and sold. The store, which has been open nearly three years, sells duck, turkey, quail, rooster, goat, lamb, fish and shrimp. Ali later acknowledged in a phone conversation that she had a few animals on the floor but added that it is not illegal.
Madaio also went to the Broadway Live Poultry Market, which is nearby on Broadway.
Geeta Jagiah, who along with her husband, Terry Jagiah, owns the Live Poultry Market, accused Madaio of lying. Jagiah also said she spoke to an state inspector who told her after an inspection Tuesday that the store was in good shape.
Both Jagiah and Ali said they planned to take legal action against Madaio.
On Tuesday at Abduallah Halal, two women in soft white protective body suits, identified themselves as inspectors with the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. They declined to comment.
Asked about the specific nature of the complaints, Joe Morrissey, an Agriculture and Markets spokesman, said only: "All of our complaints are kept in the strictest of confidence. The Department of Agriculture and Markets is actively investigating both locations."
The two markets are patronized by immigrants, many of them Guyanese for whom live meat such as poultry and goat is a traditional part of their diet.
Halal meat is slaughtered in accordance with Muslim dietary law.
In 2007, the local practice of slaughter for religious rituals prompted the city to ban residents from keeping poultry and other livestock at their homes after a man complained his children witnessed their Guyanese neighbors kill a goat.
Two years before that, Mayor Brian U. Stratton had sought to ban animal slaughter in Schenectady, which spurred the City Council in 2007 to pass a compromise ban on owning livestock in the city.
Guyanese immigrants like Ali and the Jagiahs have been relocating to the city for more than a generation. The pace accelerated in 2002 when real estate agents and then Mayor Al Jurczynski recruited them by touting the for its affordable housing and business opportunities. New arrivals, many from the Guyanese enclave of Richmond Hill in Queens, then urged friends and family to join them upstate.
