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28 March 2024

Expats caught selling dog meat in Saudi

Published
By Staff

Saudi health authorities busted a ring of Asian expatriates caught selling dog feet to local restaurants through a secret slaughterhouse served by hunters of stray dogs for many years. But authorities quickly deny the reports, saying they are sheep feet.

Readers reacting to the report in local newspapers said they believed the authorities are lying and that the meat sold by those expatriates belongs to slaughtered dogs.

Sada and other Arabic language newspapers in the Gulf kingdom said health inspectors had arrested several expatriates after catching them selling feet of dogs slaughtered inside their house in the Western Red Sea port of Jeddah.

The papers ran a YouTube film showing panicking workers with a large quantity of animal feet. They said some of the feet had been supplied to local restaurants while the rest had been cooked and sold to local customers.

Hours after it was published, Jeddah’s secretariat (municipality) denied the report and said the feet seized belong to sheep and that those workers were arrested because they violated health and labour laws in the world’s dominant oil exporter. But the readers sending comments to newspapers did not believe that statement.

“The secretariat is lying again as usual,” said one reader in a comment published by Sada Arabic language daily.

“I don’t believe them…its dog meat and I believe that we have been eating dog meat for years…a friend told me that he had noticed the number of dogs in the streets of Jeddah and even other areas has largely declined.”