Egypt has begun importing Indian meat again after a five-month ban due to reports that Indian meat contained the sarcocystis worm, which has been known to infect cattle.
According to Egyptian Ambassador to India Mohamed Higazy, the Egyptian veterinary commission inspects all Egypt-bound cattle and frozen meat in India before it is exported to Egypt to ensure it is free of disease.
“The meat is clean,” said commission head Abdel Salam Abdel Nabi. "There's no need to worry about the worm."
An Indian government official, for his part, said that "certain groups"–which he refrained from identifying–were behind the spate of recent rumors about tainted Indian meat in hopes of driving down global meat prices.
He went on to stress that the Indian government made sure all locally-produced meat was tested before being exported, noting that international health organizations did not even consider the sarcocystis worm an epidemic per se.
According to Egyptian meat importer Alaa Radwan, local retail meat prices will be reduced during the Islamic month of Ramadan–which will begin next week–following requests to this effect by the Ministry of Agriculture.
In a related development, the fourth shipment of Ethiopian livestock since Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif visited that country earlier this year–containing 2230 heads of cattle–arrived at the Red Sea port of Safaga on Thursday.
“The livestock will be quarantined for ten days for further veterinary inspection before being slaughtered,” said Safaga Mayor Ibrahim Mansour.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
