(AFP Photo)
By: Badawi Shalaby
A number of search and seizure campaigns launched by Cairo’s Veterinary Medicine Directorate (VMD) in a number of the city’s stores, restaurants, slaughterhouses, factories and open air markets, led to the recall of 1,565kg of tainted meat not suitable for human consumption, in addition to the withholding of an addition 2,578kg of recently slaughtered meat, of which 415.5kg were deemed as not meeting national health standards.
Government and financial records regarding the tainted shipments were also made public as the tainted meat supplies were incinerated.
Saad Al-Khowli, director of the VMD, said that search and seizure campaigns would continue on the orders of Ossama Kamel, the governor of Cairo. Further campaigns would be conducted in the province’s slaughterhouses, supermarkets, restaurants, meat and fish freezers, factories and distribution outlets, in an attempt to recall and incinerate any meat deemed unfit for human consumption. A number of committees were also reportedly created, consisting of doctors and veterinarians from medical departments, tasked with cooperating with Egypt’s public authorities in order to determine better ways to monitor food consumption in the country’s restaurants and public markets.
She added that a total of 1,230kg of contaminated meat and poultry had also been found and recalled when authorities unfroze food from the Al-Azhar student dorm kitchens. The seized food was subsequently incinerated.
An additional 1,378kg of frozen tainted meat was found in the kitchens of the Qasr Al-Aini Hospital.
An additional 1,200kg of slaughtered poultry was withheld in regions throughout Cairo, 323kg of which consisted of unlicensed meat being sold in the neighborhood of Sayeda Zeinab. Additional shipments of tainted meat, poultry, liver and tail meat, deemed unfit for human consumption, were recalled from the neighborhoods of Nasser City, Bulaq, Asbiko and Meidan Fatima Al-Zahra.
