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By
Deepali Ravi Mishra
Doctors removed 80 kg of polythene waste from a cow's stomach at the Bihar Veterinary College of Patna (Bihar, India) on Wednesday, highlighting the disastrous impact plastic bags can have on the health of stray animals that often eat out of garbage bins.


Dr GD Singh, Assistant Professor at the Department of Surgery and Radiology in the college who led the team comprising Dr Ravi Ranjan Kumar, five interns and compounder Madhu Kumar performed the six-year-old cow's surgery and said that it took over three hours to clean the four compartments of the animal’s stomach which mostly contained polythene of thickness below four microns.

“The treated cow is recuperating and has been discharged. But in such a condition, the next 10 days are very critical as the rumen microflora which is responsible for the whole digestion in the rumen becomes inactive, creating loss of appetite. Prognosis in this type of cases is difficult if they are reported very late", he added and exclaimed that it was the first case of its kind in his 13 years of professional practice.

The government has indicated that it plans to address the dangers posed by plastic waste with greater seriousness.

“It is the beginning of the end of the plastic menace,” said Mr Harsh Vardhan , the Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change at a conference on Monday while announcing that India would host the World Environment Day 2018 with a focus on plastic pollution. He said that it is extremely painful for animals, especially cows to live healthily with plastic waste inside them.


Cows swallow food and bring it back to the mouth to chew it before sending it to the stomach that has four chambers. Plastic getting deposited in the stomach causes slow absorption of nutrients and other complications that can lead to the animal’s death.

Dr Singh discouraged owners from allowing their animals to graze in urban areas. “People should also avoid throwing eatables in polythene bags and serious efforts should be made to spread awareness about its bad impact on the environment,” he urged.

Deepak Kumar, the owner of the cow who owns a cowshed in the Hanuman Nagar locality of south Patna said that he only realized the intensity of the problem when the cow had stopped eating completely after it was left free to graze in the open.

In most of the large cities, cows are often left in the open who end up surrounding themselves around garbage bins loaded with untreated plastic waste; only rounded at the time of milking.