Community Perception of the Existence of an Animal Slaughterhouse (RPH) in Wiradesa District, Pekalongan Regency

Abstract

Animal slaughterhouses (Rumah Potong Hewan, RPH) are strategic public facilities for supplying safe animal-source food, but when sited within a settlement, their operation directly affects residents' environmental comfort. This study characterized the residents living around the RPH in Wiradesa District, Pekalongan Regency, Central Java, and quantified their perception of the facility along two axes: environmental burden (odor, waste, water pollution) and socio-economic benefit. A descriptive field survey was conducted with 28 residents living within a 1 km radius, selected purposively to represent the four cardinal directions from the facility; perception was measured on a three-point Likert scale (1 = not, 2 = moderately, 3 = very disturbing/beneficial) and summarized with a class-range procedure whose cut-offs are reported explicitly for each sub-variable. Most respondents were male (71.4%), of productive to mature age, senior-high-school educated (46.4%), and worked as laborers (57.1%). Across the nine environmental indicators, perception scored 536 of a possible 756 (70.9%), classified as "moderately disturbing"; within this, the waste sub-variable alone reached the highest ("disturbing") category (142/168; 84.5%), driven by direct discharge of liquid waste into the river and open accumulation of solid waste, whereas odor and water pollution were "moderately disturbing." In contrast, residents rated the facility as "beneficial" (139/168; 82.7%), principally for easy access to meat (85.7%) and local employment. Reported as two directional scales rather than a single composite, the results describe a social dilemma in which a genuine, waste-led environmental burden is tolerated because of the RPH's economic and food-supply value. Prioritizing wastewater treatment (IPAL) and routine sanitation is recommended to lower the environmental burden while preserving the benefits the community values.