I have stopped eating mutton in Karachi. Until and unless I don’t hear from the government that they have taken care of the news that meat of sick sheep is being shipped and sold in Karachi from interior Sindh, I am sticking to only chicken and beef. I am not looking forward to fell ill with the Mata (or is it Minmata?) disease. We have been hearing for some weeks about the fact that in the desert Tharparkar areas of far flung interior Sindh, sheep are dying due to the Mata disease. There has been little done to cure them. In a country, where humans are dying like flied, who cares about sheep anyway. Now the media reports are pouring in that these sheep are being slaughtered and shipped to the Karachi and Hyderabad.
The spineless meat brokers have sniffed a niche to earn money there. They are purchasing these sick, about to die sheep from the owners on peanut rates. One sheep which normally costs Rs. 10,000 (US$100), is now being sold to these brokers just for Rs. 1000 (US$100) or even less. These are then sold to the butchers, hotels, and guesthouses with some profits, who in turn sell the meat as normal mutton on the usual market price. The germs of this Mata disease get transferred to the humans and they are likely to suffer the same fate as of sick sheep. This all is happening openly, and even TV channels have shown footages from the cattle markets in Mithi, but in vain. It’s useless to expect any measures from the useless Qaim Ali Shah administration, so its better to just stop eating mutton. After all its better to die by the hands of target killers than the Matta sheep disease.