JEDDAH, 30 August 2007 — A senior Health Ministry official yesterday blamed poisonous chemicals for the death of more than 2,000 camels in different parts of the country. The official also warned the public against eating the meat of sick camels before determining the reason for the disease in these camels.
“According to available information the camels died of poisonous chemicals. As the chemicals cannot be removed by cooking, it is dangerous to eat the meat of affected camels,” Falah Al-Mazroue, director of preventive medicine at the ministry, told Al-Watan Arabic daily.
The Ministry of Agriculture has sent frozen samples of dead camels to France to try to discover the reason for their death.
According to Al-Watan, 60 more camels as well as 400 sheep and seven cows died on Tuesday. There is no official confirmation for the new death toll.
On Aug. 25, some two weeks after the animals began to die, Agriculture Minister Fahd Balghunaim said nearly 2,000 camels had died. “It is not because of anyg infectious disease. These were cases of poisoning,” the minister told reporters in Riyadh.
Balghunaim said the animals were fed bran that had been bought from traders whose bran stocks were contaminated. He put the final number of dead camels in recent weeks at 1,982. Laboratory tests were being carried out to reveal exactly what was wrong with the animal feed, he said at the time.
According to figures reported in the Saudi press, at least 5,000 camels have now died and thousands more are sick.
Officials of the Commission for Supervision and Investigation will tour the areas where camel deaths were reported to make a field assessment of the problem and review the measures taken by the Agriculture Ministry to address the situation.
“We will take the assistance of experts in testing samples of fodder that was present in the market during the time of camel deaths,” the commission said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
The commission will also check the measures taken by municipalities to dispose of dead camels.
Just before the camels began to die, newspapers had reported an outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in the Kingdom. Al-Yaum newspaper, citing an Agriculture Ministry official, said colleagues had intercepted “a cargo of 351 sheep, including 336 which were suspected of being affected by aphthous fever, imported from Iran by a breeder.
“The breeder was asked to put the beasts in quarantine to await analysis from a laboratory in Riyadh ... But the stockbreeder sold the 336 animals without awaiting the results,” the paper said. Another newspaper, Al-Madinah, said the sheep had been brought in via Bahrain, which is linked with Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway.
The increasing deaths of camels have sent shockwaves among limited income farmers who depend on these animals for their daily bread. In order to compensate their losses, Prince Abdul Rahman, deputy minister of defense and aviation, donated 300 of his camels. Riyadh Gov. Prince Salman, meanwhile, instructed officials to postpone a camel contest in Wadi Al-Dawasser following the death of several camels in the region in recent weeks.
