In our years of studying veterinary medicine, few problems have troubled us as persistently as this one not because it is scientifically complex, but because it is so entirely preventable, and yet so consistently ignored. Every Eid ul Azha, millions of Pakistani families consume Qurbani meat with complete and reasonable trust that what they are eating is safe. In too many cases, that trust is misplaced. Not because the animal was visibly diseased or improperly slaughtered but because of what was administered to it in the days before it arrived at your gate, and because nobody at any point in that chain stopped to ask whether it was safe to do so.

The practice we are referring to is the irrational, unregulated, and pharmacologically reckless use of veterinary drugs on Qurbani animals. When a drug is administered to an animal, it does not perform its function and obligingly vanish. It enters the bloodstream, distributes into muscle tissue, and accumulates in organs particularly the liver and kidneys, which are among the most prized and widely shared cuts of Qurbani meat. The body then metabolises and excretes the compound slowly, over a period codified in veterinary pharmacology as the withdrawal period. This is the minimum interval between the last administered dose and slaughter, during which drug concentrations decline to levels considered safe for human consumption. When that window is ignored and an animal is slaughtered days or hours after drug administration, the residues remain in the meat at concentrations that were never intended to enter the human food chain. Your family consumes them at dinner, entirely unaware.

Corticosteroids, most commonly Dexamethasone, are perhaps the most cynically deployed. Sellers administer them to underweight or lethargic animals because they produce a rapid, dramatic improvement in apparent condition so appetite returns, posture improves, the animal commands a better market price. The buyer sees a healthy animal. What he is actually purchasing is a pharmacologically masked sick one. Residues of corticosteroids disrupt human hormonal regulation and suppress immune function, with particular concern for children and pregnant women whose endocrine systems are either still developing or already under significant physiological demand.

The antibiotic residue problem carries consequences that extend well beyond the individual consumer. Oxytetracycline, Penicillin, and Enrofloxacin are routinely administered without veterinary prescription, without rational dosing, and without any regard for withdrawal periods. The residues that reach your plate are not concentrated enough to treat an infection in the person who consumes them — but they are precisely concentrated enough to expose gut bacteria to sub-inhibitory antibiotic levels, creating exactly the selective pressure under which resistance develops. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the defining public health crises of our generation, and the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is among its most preventable drivers. When a child in your household develops a bacterial infection and the antibiotic prescribed by the doctor simply does not work, the chain of causality may trace back, in part, to meat consumed at a previous Eid.

Sedatives are used to make stressed, poorly-conditioned animals appear calm and manageable at market. Growth-promoting hormones are injected to inflate body weight artificially before sale. Both leave behind residues neurological and endocrine-disrupting respectively, that enter your meat and, subsequently, your family’s bodies without declaration, without consent, and without any of the safeguards that govern medicines prescribed for human beings.

The solution is genuinely straightforward. Withdrawal periods exist precisely to prevent this, and respecting them costs nothing except honesty. Veterinary practitioners carry a professional and ethical obligation to prescribe rationally and to educate the farmers and sellers they serve. Regulatory authorities must move residue testing programmes from policy documents into actual, functioning practice at Qurbani markets across the country.

We are aware that questioning a livestock seller about recent drug administration feels unusual. But you routinely ask what is in the medicine you give your child. The meat on your Eid table deserves exactly the same question.