The 21,000 Australian sheep, infected with salmonella and actinomyces, arrived in Pakistan in the first week of September after Bahrain refused to accept the consignment because the animals allegedly had the scabby mouth disease.
The consignment was sent by an Australian company called Wellard Exports.
While speaking to Express News, Shaikh said that the process of killing and dumping the sheep has begun under the supervision of deputy commissioner Karachi.
He added that officials from the federal and provincial governments along with the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) are present on the site to oversee the process that might take a few days.
The commissioner said that the process was initiated on the directives of Livestock Department, as they said that the sheep were not “safe for human consumption.”
Earlier, Sindh Livestock and Fisheries Secretary Syed Abid Ali Shah had said on Saturday that media reports suggesting the recently imported Australian sheep are infected with contagious bacteria are baseless and fabricated.
Last week, the Australian high commissioner to Pakistan Peter Heyward had said that the sheep had been inspected at the Karachi port and were cleared. He insisted that the sheep were healthy and refusal by Bahrain to offload sheep puzzled him.
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