CAIRO: Egyptian public officials and experts have said they expect to see a decline in meat prices over the next few months in the country as a result of consumer boycotts of meat and an increase in supply of imported meats. The ministry of agriculture also plans to provide a number of facilities to encourage the importing of meat and live animals from abroad. Animal and environmental activists have criticized the move to import additional live animals into the country. Australian companies, after a few years ban from importing animals into the country, are looking forward to the ease of restrictions, but animal groups have lashed out, saying the transport conditions are dreadful and “the result is that hundreds, if not more, animals die en route to Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries.” Under Islamic law, an animal must be slaughtered by having its throat slit and the blood drained from the body. Saad Hayani, President of the Egyptian Buffalo Producers Association, called for the “rationing of consumption” of meat during the next 6 months, “to provide large quantities of live animals for the winter breeding season and peak consumption in the month of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha.” Late in April, a number of Egyptian groups called for boycotts of red meat, which likely received much attention from the government after thousands of people joined the Facebook groups demanding lower prices for meat products in the country. During the holy month of Ramadan and the festival that follows Egyptians consume twice the amount of meat as they do during the normal year. Hayani told local newspapers that there was a decline in the prices of live animals on farms and markets during the last week of April, pointing to lower prices of buffalo from 20 Egyptian pounds per kilo to LE 18.5, beef from LE 21.5 to LE 20. He said the continued decline “will be followed by forcing butchers to make significant reductions in prices during the next week.” Mohamed al-Amr, a local Cairo butcher, said the government should not attempt to control the prices of meat. “People are still buying what we are giving them and it is costing more and more now because there just aren't enough animals around, so if they import live animals that will help solve two problems without having to regulate our work,” he said. But Hayani warned of the danger of importing unregulated live animals from abroad and traded in the local market, which he said could lead to “health problems for the livestock of Egypt. In 2006, when the importation of live animals was infected with diseases this led to the spread of foot and mouth disease among Egyptian animals.” For his part, Mohamed El Shafei, Deputy Chairman of the Federation of Poultry Producers, said that May will witness a breakthrough in the prices of poultry due to increased local production of poultry. He said he expected the number of birds to be killed daily to reach 1.5 million, “in addition to lower demand for meat during the summer season. “The current rise in prices of poultry is not only because of the producers of poultry, but because of the mediators,” he added. He argued that it is “essential that veterinary services control the epidemic diseases,” including avian influenza and swine flu, “to ensure the protection of domestic production to increase supply in the market,” pointing out that the aim is to protect the national industry of poultry to solve the problem of the lack of animal protein.” The poultry association reported that prices were up to LE 16 per kilo, which means “the poultry market has started to balance the price to meet the needs of a large segment of citizens.” “Egypt cannot achieve self-sufficiency on red meat for reasons of lack of extensive natural grassland compared to the richer countries of animal production,” pointing to what he said was the importance of the “development and protection of poultry production as the only sector that can achieve self-sufficiency.” Poultry farming in Egypt is one of the few almost completely factory farmed animals in the country. According to one eye-witness visiting a chicken farm about an hour north of Cairo, the situation was “appalling.” The activist, who showed footage to Bikya Masr from a hidden camera, said that “the idea that we have to stack chickens on top of each other, let them walk around in their own waste so they can throw more and more birds into one area is really disgusting. I don't think Egyptians want to consume this amount of meat at this cost. Or maybe they don't care,” added the activist, who asked not to be named due to security concerns. Shafei called for the need to “develop a scientific strategy based on non-presumption of bad faith between the producer and consumer and agencies and scientists to eradicate diseases that threaten the production of poultry” and warned the crisis facing the industry “is a continuing threat from the state to resort to importing poultry from abroad to reduce the prices of meat.” He stressed that this policy has negative effects on the “current flight of investment in the sector, creating a new kind of monopoly of importers of poultry meat and the return of high prices.” BM
