SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

A warn­ing against eat­ing wild meat was is­sued yes­ter­day by the di­rec­tor of Vet­eri­nary Pub­lic Health Dr Saed Ra­haman. He said stud­ies done in the past on wild an­i­mals have shown they car­ry dis­eases that can be trans­mit­ted to hu­mans.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s dai­ly press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Dr Ra­haman said the Try­panoso­ma cruzi, a par­a­site that caus­es Cha­gas dis­ease, has been found in wild meat stud­ies done by re­searchers in the past. He said the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) is con­duct­ing its own re­search in­to which wild meat would be un­safe for hu­man con­sump­tion. 

“We have had wild meat stud­ies in the past, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Try­panoso­ma cruzi. It caus­es heart con­di­tions in hu­mans and we have found this is car­ried from wild an­i­mals through the kiss­ing bug and we have found pos­i­tive an­i­mals in the past,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, the kiss­ing bug be­comes in­fect­ed by feed­ing on hu­man or an­i­mal blood that con­tains cir­cu­lat­ing par­a­sites. Try­panoso­ma cruzi can al­so be trans­mit­ted from hu­man to hu­man through blood trans­fu­sions, or­gan trans­plants, from moth­er to un­born ba­by and in lab­o­ra­to­ry ac­ci­dents.

Ra­haman said a pol­i­cy to reg­u­late the sale and con­sump­tion of lo­cal wild meat is in the works but it re­quires ap­proval from stake­hold­ers. He said wild an­i­mals are shot in the field, where there is a lack of prop­er dress­ing and in­spec­tion and car­cass­es have been found to have many bruis­es and do not bleed prop­er­ly, which can cause rapid spoilage.

He said an­i­mal car­cass­es al­so car­ry lep­tospiro­sis.

“There is some ev­i­dence of wild an­i­mals car­ry­ing many of these dis­eases. With re­spect to lep­tospiro­sis, all of these wild an­i­mal species do car­ry lep­tospi­ra in their car­cass­es and es­pe­cial­ly when they are not evis­cer­at­ed or gut­ted prop­er­ly at cap­ture then this can be one of the se­ri­ous con­di­tions. Gas­troin­testi­nal par­a­sites like sal­mo­nel­la are present in many wild species and they al­so present a par­tic­u­lar risk.”

Ra­haman said pub­lic health of­fi­cers are do­ing ran­dom spot checks at restau­rants and food es­tab­lish­ments to en­sure own­ers not on­ly com­ply with COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions but with pub­lic health laws.

“Be­cause we want to see as many es­tab­lish­ments in the short­est time pos­si­ble, we are al­so not wav­ing the hard stick as it is in terms of com­pli­ance. We have had very good co­op­er­a­tion from busi­ness­es so far, there has been no need for en­force­ment.

“The pub­lic health in­spec­tor will first go to the es­tab­lish­ment and look at things from a dis­tance with­out en­gag­ing the em­ploy­er, whether or not they have hand wash­ing sta­tions, whether they have soap, the hand tow­els and the col­lec­tion of trash,” Ra­haman said.

He said the pub­lic health of­fi­cer is al­so re­quired to check whether busi­ness­es have any em­ploy­ees in place to en­sure cus­tomers sani­tise and wash hands be­fore en­ter­ing their food es­tab­lish­ments.

“Then they will look at the prac­tice, for the peo­ple who are com­ing in, are they re­quired to wash hands or have sink and soap just there for face val­ue, so whether they have some­one who is a mon­i­tor and if that per­son is mon­i­tor­ing whether peo­ple are ad­her­ing to it,” he ex­plained.

He said on Wednes­day, one busi­ness was shut down af­ter it was found they had no ap­proval for pro­duc­ing food on their premis­es and their food was not kept at the right tem­per­a­ture.

He said the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment met with the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health of­fi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Labour on Wednes­day to dis­cuss what fines could be in­tro­duced for larg­er fac­to­ries and es­tab­lish­ments that do not ad­here to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nances.