Expired meat from 2015 found in Karachi's eatery being probed for minors' death

Arizona Grill rubbishes news of expired meat, says it doesn’t use imported meat at all

KARACHI: The Sindh Food Authority (SFA) claimed to have found expired meat products from a warehouse that they claimed was being used to store the inventory of Arizona Grill, located on Zamzama Boulevard, in DHA Phase V.

The discovery was made after two minor siblings died from alleged food poisoning on Sunday after they had dined at the high-end restaurant and eaten candy from a stall outside an amusement park.

The victims’ mother is still under treatment at a private hospital.
According to the SFA’s operations director, Abrar Sheikh, the restaurant had been sealed on Sunday, after news of the minors’ deaths surfaced.

On Tuesday, an informant deployed in the area tipped the officials about suspicious activity in the vicinity. When the officials reached the site, accompanied by police personnel, they found a Suzuki pickup being loaded with food items, such as imported meat packages and juice concentrates. The inventory was being brought out of a warehouse located in a side street off main Zamzama Boulevard.



On closer inspection, the meat was found to have been imported in 2014 and according to the inscription on the packets, it was supposed to have been used by February 24, 2015. According to Sheikh, over 50 kilogrammes of the meat, juice concentrates and other ingredients used to prepare food were confiscated from the warehouse. He added that on seeing the police, the Suzuki driver fled the scene, while the authorities detained a suspect, Waheed Ali, who revealed that he had been employed by Arizona Grill as a caretaker at the warehouse.

Sheikh alleged that the restaurant management did not disclose the existence of the warehouse, adding that the staff had already dumped the contents of the deep freezer by the time the authorities reached the site. He added that the SFA officials have collected samples of the inventory, which will be sent for testing in addition to the samples taken from the restaurant a couple of days earlier.
Denial

When The Express Tribune reached out to Arizona Grill for comment, Sardar Raziq, who manages their PECHS outlet, rubbished the reports regarding the discovery of expired meat products from its warehouse.
“The images being flashed on the media are of imported meat,” said Raziq. “We do not use imported meat. Our steaks are priced between Rs700 and Rs800, while restaurants that use imported meat charge Rs7,000 to Rs8,000 for a steak. It is not viable for us to use imported meat, hence all our meat is locally sourced.”



Asked about the SFA’s raid at their warehouse, Raziq said that he did not know whose warehouse it was but it had nothing to do with their franchise.

Investigations
Meanwhile, the investigation team has finished collecting evidence from the victims’ house, the restaurant and the candy shop outside Chunky Monkey amusement park. In all, 36 samples have been dispatched to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency, including the six samples collected from one of the minor’s organs in the post-mortem.

The second set of samples has also been to the Hussain Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry at the University of Karachi.
According to a source, no traces of poison were found in the chemical examination of some of the samples at a private laboratory in Karachi. The samples have now been sent to another laboratory for further verification.

The official added that the FIR of the incident has not been registered yet as the investigation team is waiting on the forensic results. For now, he said, the deaths seemed to have been caused by food-poisoning and subsequent dehydration. He added that the cause of food-poisoning will only be ascertained once they have the results.