Muscat: With Eid al Adha approaching, the Ministry of Agricultural, Fisheries, and Water Resources (MoAFWR) has released important guidelines to ensure the safety while slaughtering animals.
These guidelines aim to educate citizens and residents about maintaining hygiene and safety when purchasing and preparing animals for sacrifice, ensuring they are free from health risks.
The ministry advises that when buying animals, it is essential to ensure they are disease-free, as sick livestock can pose significant health risks to humans.
Additionally, it is recommended to use municipal slaughterhouses to help maintain public health standards.
The ministry outlined key precautionary measures to follow before, during, and after slaughter, which include the following:
Ensure animals are free from external parasites like ticks.
Some diseases might not show symptoms, and the presence of ticks does not always indicate illness.
The person conducting the slaughter should be healthy, free from injuries or wounds, and should wear protective clothing.
After slaughtering, the person is advised to dispose waste properly and hygienically, avoiding open areas to prevent infection spread.
Many zoonotic diseases can be transmitted during the slaughtering process, such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, a deadly viral disease carried by ticks with a mortality rate of about 40% in humans.
Zoonotic diseases are defined as infections that can transfer between livestock and humans through various direct or indirect methods, including respiratory, digestive, ocular, or skin contact, or bites from ticks, mosquitoes, and lice.
These guidelines are part of the ministry's efforts to protect the health of citizens and residents and to promote health awareness in the community.
The ministry urges everyone to carefully follow these guidelines when purchasing and handling sacrificial animals.
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