Ranya butcher arrested after trying to ‘sell meat’ from diseased cow

RANYA — Authorities in Ranya, the central city of Sulaymaniyah’s Raparin autonomous administration, arrested a butcher accused of attempting to sell meat from a diseased and decomposing cow, officials said Saturday.

Karzan Sleman, head of the joint inspection committee from the Ranya governorate administration, told 964media that “in coordination with the Economic Department of Raparin Security Directorate, we monitored a citizen who was trying to sell the meat of a cow infected with foot-and-mouth disease virus and make it appear healthy, but no one agreed to buy it.”

Sleman added, “The owner of the cow tried again during the night to sell it, but failed. The cow eventually died, and he moved the carcass to a barn in an agricultural area intending to dismember it and sell the meat. But because we had previously inspected that area and seized butchering tools, he panicked and later dumped the carcass in a canal by the side of the road in Girdi Dema, near residents’ wheat fields.”

He said the committee conducted day-and-night searches for the infected animal, and after 12 hours discovered the carcass had been discarded in an unsanitary location. Sleman warned that the improper disposal could have triggered an outbreak of disease and foul odors that would disturb residents and potentially spread foot-and-mouth disease in the area.

After notifying the investigation unit, authorities arrested the cow’s owner. “We moved the cow’s remains to a proper location away from residents and buried it in a scientific manner,” Sleman said.

The butcher has been detained under Article 240 of the Penal Code, and legal procedures are underway.

This comes as hemorrhagic fever continues to spread in the Kurdistan Region, where a 45-year-old woman from Shiladze died on Saturday in the first recorded fatality from the disease this year, according to health officials in Duhok. The woman had been admitted to Azadi Hospital on May 8 but died two days later after rapid infection. She reportedly kept livestock, believed to be the source of the virus. Another case has been confirmed in Erbil’s Koya district, bringing the total in the region to two. Nationwide, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has recorded 54 cases so far in 2025.