The sheep saga

Healthcare issues hardly merit any newspaper space in our country, but the sheep saga has helped to divert some important debate and discussion on the quality of livestock we consume. Of course, there has been a lot of controversy, but I hope all this will highlight to focus the irregularities into the spotlight and prevent such debacles from happening in the future.

So, just to recap what happened, the original shipment of 21,000 sheep from an Australian company was turned away from Bahrain where quarantine officials rejected the sheep, reportedly due to the sheep suffering from the scabby mouth disease. The sheep then made their way to Pakistan and the saga began.

Since their arrival in Pakistan, close to 7,600 sheep have been culled on suspicion of disease. Media reports only helped to inflame the issue, with reports of untrained workers being used to club the sheep to death and some sheep even being buried alive. The culling officially stopped on September 22, when the court finally stepped in. The current status is that the sheep are in limbo, waiting for news to come from England. The Sindh High Court ordered testing of the sheep from an internationally acclaimed laboratory after receiving contradictory reports from the federal and provincial government testing facilities. The services of the World Reference Laboratory in the UK have been retained and an urgent analysis is currently underway.

This whole scenario leaves a lot to question and debate. First of all, the fact that there was a shipment allowed that had been rejected by the Bahraini authorities should have been enough to raise eyebrows. Why were no feathers ruffled then? The systems for checking foreign livestock shipments in Pakistan need to be thoroughly regulated and brought under scrutiny.

The second question that crops up is that how come culling was started if one is to believe that the sheep were in good health, according to the Australian company? Surely, there is more than meets the eye. The fact that culling was initiated means some testing was done on the sheep, and these details should have come out right away. And if the culling was stopped on a high court order and there are still sick sheep, the disease could spread and create even more havoc.

The next thing that raises controversy is the manner of the culling itself. Disturbing imagery came out of the actual culling process. Understandably, animal welfare and care are unknown parameters in our country, but one would expect the healthcare authorities to have some sort of system in place with guidelines to follow. The situation is, indeed, highly worrying if one is to believe the disturbing stories that have been circulated in animal welfare circles.

Like almost all other dramas, the courts have been dragged into this fiasco as well. The disturbing point is that the sheep testing has been relegated to a third country — this demonstrates the complete lack of trust in the testing process in Pakistan. This is shocking and implies that the system is not transparent and susceptible to tweaking.

The list of questions and, more importantly, the concerns raised by this livestock story is truly long. The whole system is in disarray and heads at the top should roll. The governmental personnel responsible need to clean up their act and institute a transparent system. After all, the health of thousands of humans is at stake, not to mention the animals, if the sick sheep transfer their bugs to other animals. As for now, like other systems in Pakistan, the sheep wait in limbo, looking also at the courts for their future.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2012.