Two thousand chickens were destroyed and 4 tons of substandard and rotten dried fish were confiscated in a crackdown by the Jeddah municipality on Sunday.

“The municipality confiscated unhealthy fish in Briman. It was packed and ready for distribution,” said Abdulaziz Al Ghamdi from the municipality.

In a similar raid, the Ministry of Commerce destroyed chickens in Khumra on Sunday.

“Following a tipoff from a citizen, inspectors raided the warehouse where chickens were being slaughtered in an unhygienic manner. Besides, the labels indicating expiry dates were changed to cheat customers,” a ministry statement said.

The inspectors were accompanied by security and municipality teams.

“The team also stopped over 1,700 chicken packs ready to be loaded onto vans besides confiscating 500 live birds and seizing 1,000 forged labels of other brands,” the statement said.

Al-Ghamdi said municipality teams zeroed in on a large facility where rotten fish was dried. “All the laborers working in the facility were in violation of labor laws and were detained,” he said, adding that the fraud case has been referred to the Ministry of Commerce.

Dried fish is mostly consumed by Bangladeshis, Burmese, Filipinos and Thais, and is processed by some of them in Jeddah and Makkah, sources said.

Jeddawis welcomed the raid that, they said, will ensure the quality and prevent fraudulent practices.

“We are happy that authorities are focusing on such facilities that indulge in fraud to cheat customers,” Mohammed Manzur Alam, a Bangladeshi expat who is a regular buyer of dry fish, told Arab News. “We are aware that most of the dried fish available here is substandard, but we buy them because the imported dried fish is expensive.”

Babul Abdul Rasheed, another resident, also gave similar views.