Will India replace Sudan as a potential source of cheap meat for the local market, asks Gamal Nkrumah The rising price of beef has once again emerged as a hot potato item. A kilo of beef in up-market Egyptian butcher shops now costs between LE30-35, while a kilo of veal goes for between LE35-45. The dramatic increase in the price of meat, much of which is imported, has mainly been blamed on the rise of the dollar-pound exchange rate over the past year or so. With Egyptian authorities avidly looking for alternatives, Sudan and India have emerged as two countries that may be able to provide Egypt with cheaper sources of meat. Sudan -- Egypt's immediate southern neighbour -- was seen as an especially likely source of affordable beef. At first, there was talk of a barter deal whereby Sudanese beef was to be exchanged for Egyptian cement, fertilisers, medical and electrical equipment. Later developments indicated that Sudanese beef was to be imported and sold in Egypt at very affordable prices. Only three months ago, the country was agog with rumours about huge consignments of Sudanese beef ear-marked for the Egyptian market -- and set to be sold at an unbelievable price of less than LE20 a kilo. Several months later, the Egyptian public is still waiting for the Sudanese meat to materialise. People are now wondering if the deal has gone down the drain. According to Sudanese Embassy officials, the contract is still in place. Indeed, Sudanese Agriculture Minister Magzoub Khalifa is scheduled to visit Cairo soon to facilitate the implementation of the meat deal. "We are prepared to deliver between 20,000- 30,000 tonnes of slaughtered cattle a year to Egypt," Fouad Ibrahim, the economic attaché at the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo, told Al- Ahram Weekly. Sudanese Ambassador to Egypt Ahmed Abdel-Halim concurred, vehemently denying that Sudan lacked proper quarantine regulations. He insisted that veterinary health regulations in Sudan are of high international standards, and that delays are due to logistical problems. When fears emerged that Sudanese beef was not up to par with international standards (with some even hinting that the meat was so cheap because it was not fit for human consumption), former Prime Minister Atef Ebeid dispatched a team of veterinary experts to Sudan to inspect the quality of the meat destined for Egyptian markets, and respond to questions that were raised about Sudanese quarantine regulations. The committee's report concluded that all was well with the Sudanese meat. Last week, Egyptian newspapers were rife with speculation about the whereabouts of the promised Sudanese beef. With spiraling meat prices resulting in an important source of animal protein being no longer affordable to much of the population, much hope had been placed on the cheap Sudanese meat that was supposedly about to flood the Egyptian market. According to Abdel-Halim, "the contract still stands. It is the rainy season in Sudan at the moment and because of difficult transport and communications, it takes some time for the herdsmen to gather the cattle and transport it to Khartoum abattoirs." In the meantime, other theories have emerged. The first posits that an Egyptian mafia-like group of meat importers who prefer to buy frozen South American and Australian meat are trying to block Sudanese meat imports from reaching the Egyptian markets. The other, more plausible theory is that Sudanese meat merchants are furious about the Sudanese government's deal with Egypt. The Sudanese meat merchants say that they were not consulted, and will not abide by the terms of an agreement that sells good-quality Sudanese meat at unfairly reduced prices in Egypt. Given the current humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and the dire Sudanese economic situation, they argue, Sudan should not be put in the compromising position of subsidising meat exported to Egypt, its relatively wealthier northern neighbour. The focus on inexpensive Sudanese beef -- and its association in the Egyptian consumers' minds with poor quality -- also angers Sudanese meat merchants. "Why do they insist that it is 'cheap meat' when it is very high quality?" Sudanese meat merchant Kamal Ibrahim asked Al-Ahram Weekly. "The bad publicity campaign denigrating Sudanese beef by labelling it cheap is criminal, because it negatively impacts the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan," he said. "The Egyptian public's impression is that Sudanese meat is cheap, second-rate, and of poor grade." According to Ibrahim, "the price of Sudanese beef exported to Egypt as stipulated by the contract has to be renegotiated." Former Sudanese Foreign Minister Mansour Khalid said "the issue is much more complex." Khalid told the Weekly that "the Sudanese government first made an agreement with [Saudi] Prince Walid Bin Talal and gave him monopoly over meat exported from Sudan to Arab countries, including Egypt. But the problem was that the Sudanese government does not own the cattle. It therefore does not have the right to sign contracts on behalf of Sudanese cattle owners and meat merchants." Khalid went on to explain that the Sudanese government was forced to cancel the contract with Bin Talal. "But then the same mistake was committed when the Sudanese government again signed a deal with Egypt without cross referencing on prices with the Sudanese cattle owners and meat merchants." Sudan has traditionally exported livestock, rather than packaged meat, to Egypt, and camel rather than cattle. In fact, the country has long been one of the main sources of Egypt's camel meat, a plentiful and relatively inexpensive alternative to beef that is especially favoured by low- income consumers. It is estimated that Sudan exports 160,000 camels annually to Egypt, but no precise figures are available since relatively porous borders mean that many camels pass through the desert Darb Al-Arbaein route from Darfur to Assiut in Upper Egypt unaccounted for, and then onwards to the outskirts of Giza, where the animals are graded and slaughtered. Although Sudanese beef has not successfully penetrated the Egyptian market the way Sudanese camel meat has, the case is being made for both the vast amounts of Sudanese beef that might be available, as well as its potential quality. The proximity of Sudanese beef to the Egyptian market also means that fresh Sudanese meat can be imported more quickly and easily into the country. The fact that Sudanese animals are fed nothing but pasture has also been considered a plus. Grass-fed Sudanese beef is widely regarded as safer and more nutritious than beef imported from countries that use growth-promoting additives; its meat is considered comparable in taste to Egyptian homegrown or baladi meat. Sudanese cattle typically graze on grass, and are especially plentiful in the country's western regions of Darfur and Kordofan. The pastures usually have no artificial fertiliser, pesticides or chemical spray, and the beef, which is not given hormones or animal bi-products or fed on anti-biotics and implants, is free of bovine spongiform encephaopathy or BSE -- better known as Mad Cow Disease. But as demand for affordable beef soars in Egypt, whether or not this seemingly perfect Sudanese beef will ever actually become available has become a big question mark. In fact, much has been made of what the authorities might now be cooking up for the country's less privileged classes' protein intake. The government, for instance, recently indicated renewed interest in importing Indian meat -- which was banned after a consignment of Indian buffalo meat was found to be contaminated two years ago. The Indians argued that only the private company concerned should have been banned, not the entire Indian meat industry. Egypt, it appears, has finally been won over by the Indian argument. Two months ago, former Prime Minister Atef Ebeid dispatched a high-level delegation to India, headed by the People's Assembly Health and Environment Committee Chairman Hamdi El-Sayed. On Monday, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif met with India's Ambassador to Egypt Rajendra Singh Rathore to discuss the resumption of the importation of Indian buffalo meat to Egypt. "Indian buffalo meat is of a very high quality, free of disease and has a very competitive price," the ambassador told the Weekly. Although the possibility of importing Indian wheat topped discussions that also took place between Rathore and Supply Minister Hassan Khedr last week, the ambassador said the subject of meat also came up.
