Iran sees a record slump in poultry consumption

Over the past few months, Iran experienced a 20-30% drop in demand in the domestic poultry market, prompting farmers to scale down operations. The Iranian poultry farming industry has not been in the best shape for the past several years, but the last few months were the worst, estimated Ataullah Hassanzadeh, CEO of Mazandaran poultry farmers union. In December-January, the market evidenced a surplus of 15 million heads of chicken, with a value of up to 400 billion tomans (US$0.95 million), he estimated. Rough calculations showed that the demand slumped by 20-30%, though this figure can vary across Iran’s provinces. Mazandaran poultry farmers are estimated to provide 80% of broiler meat consumed in the country’s capital of Tehran. Plummeting consumption has forced poultry farmers to act. Hassanzadeh said that producers had to remove hatching eggs from the production cycle. This step comes with great pain for Iranian farmers since thousands of expensive eggs are wasted. The price ...