A sixfold rise in animal feed prices in Iran has brought about a wave of bankruptcy among cattle breeders, forcing them to sell their starving or half-dead cows at lower prices to slaughterhouses. 

According to a report by Shargh Daily on Sunday, there are long queues of cattle at slaughterhouses as the supply is high and demand low due to the dire economic situation in the country.

The chairman of the Livestock Supply Council, Mansour Purian, said the livestock have become weak and lost a lot of weight, adding that such cheap cattle have a lot of customers in the Arab countries, so smugglers sell these half-dead cows to them to be fed on their equipped farms. 

On the other hand, low purchasing power by Iranians has drastically reduced the demand for meat by as much as 50 percent in the past year, which has caused many small farmers to be eliminated from the supply chain.

Criticizing the government’s decision to increase livestock feed prices, Nasser Ostad-Ahmadi, the managing director of one of Iran’s largest farmers' cooperatives, told the daily that “in the history of Iranian animal husbandry, both before and after the revolution, it had never been seen that the government increases the price of a commodity sixfold overnight.

Soybean meal, barley and corn for livestock and chicken feed are mainly imported from Russia and other countries. Any shortages or higher prices can push up the price of meat further.