On a Monday morning, the South African capital of Cape Town woke up to a sewage-like stench that city officials later discovered came from a ship carrying 19,000 live cattle.
Many media outlets, citing people living in the city, described it as one of the worst smells residents had ever experienced.
One resident, Lerato Basing said, “It ruined my day because even when I was indoors, every time the lift opened, the smell spilt over into the office and it stuck in the back of my throat like a bad aftertaste”.
Cape Town’s mayoral committee member in charge of water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien, wrote in a Monday morning post on X that he’d been told of a “sewage smell blanketing parts of the city.”
‘The western parts of the city and its business district, which are closer to the coast, had specifically reported the smells’, said Badroodien.
Just an hour after his first post, Badroodien stated environmental health authorities confirmed the source of the “foul smell” was the Kuwaiti-flagged livestock ship Al Kuwait.
He said the ship was due to leave at 9 p.m. that evening, though vessel tracking data shows it was still docked in Cape Town at 9 a.m. Tuesday local time.
“The 623-foot-long livestock ship departed Brazil earlier this month and is bound for Iraq”, ‘according to the National Council of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’.
A veterinary consultant was sent on board when the ship arrived on Sunday evening to load feed for the animals, said the organization.
The stench that spread through Cape Town was suggestive of the conditions faced by cattle on long-haul voyages, added the SPCA, condemning the practice of exporting live animals.
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