New Camel deaths raise alarm

The deaths of 12 camels in Saudi Arabia have brought the total of cases in the country’s southern Najran province to 30 over the past two weeks, the Al-Watan daily said yesterday.

The newspaper said owners of the camels believed their camels died because of food poisoning which resulted from contaminated fodder.

The uncontained situation has concerned camel breeders and owners in the province, who are boycotting local fodder until the cause of the deaths is confirmed.

The Ministry of Agriculture branch in Najran is opening an investigation and took blood samples form the dead camels as well as fodder samples to analyze before reaching any conclusions.

Ali Al-Salim, the owner of the dead camels, told Al-Watan that medicines prescribed by the ministry did not help in saving the lives of his animals or help to heal a further 18 camels which are struggling for their lives.

An official from the Agriculture Ministry responded to the claims of Al-Salim and told that daily that the delay in reporting the cases is the reason for the failure of the camels to respond to the medicines. He continued that the ministry is dispatching a veterinarian team to look for and cure the infected camels in the province.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Agriculture was held responsible in October for the deaths of over 2,000 camels in the kingdom over the past few months after the Shoura Council opened a wide investigation.

A special committee to the advisory Shoura Council found that ‘shortcomings’ within the ministry were responsible for causing the camel deaths and harming livestock owners across the kingdom.

The committee called on a government company to supervise the production and distribution of camel fodder - which was found to contain large amounts of toxins in tests last month - to avoid ‘criminal activity or foul play’

Saudi camel breeders that lost herds worth millions of dollars also held the Ministry of Agriculture responsible for the losses after the ministry confirmed that toxins in animal feed rather than disease killed the camels.

Camel breeding is a popular commercial activity for Bedouins in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom’s camel population which is estimated at 850,000 is a big trading business for breeders who bred them for their meat and milk, for racing, and for beauty contests.

Camels began dying in the Dawasir Valley south of Riyadh in August, with deaths also reported as far south as Mecca and the border of Yemen.

More recently, over 20 camels have died in Yanbu area north of the port city of Jeddah in early December after eating contaminated fodder. The livestock owners complained that the Ministry of Agriculture has failed to deploy vets to deal with the problem.

A Ministry of Agriculture source told Arab News back then that the ministry is simply short of vets in the Yanbu region to handle the infected cases.

The source also said that breeders are buying cheap fodder and poisoning their own animals as a result; added to that the Ministry of Commerce is responsible for checking on the quality of fodder sold at markets, not the Ministry of Agriculture, the source told the Arab News daily.

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