Iraq has banned the import of poultry and eggs from Iran as the country is eying to become one of the exporters of meat and avicultural products in the region.

According to an article published in Shargh Daily on Monday, the head of Iran’s Broiler Breeders Association, Mohammad Yousefi, says as the price of animal feed has increased by sixfold, poultry farmers are forced to sell their chickens at a loss in domestic market while Iran's export markets are becoming more and more limited.

Iraq, which is Iran's second largest export market overall after China with at least three to four billion dollars of trade per year, plans to reduce its imports to support its own producers.

Hamid Hosseini, a board member of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Sharq that the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture had repeatedly protested low tariffs on agricultural imports from Iran and called on the government to increase import tariffs. 

Shargh also quoted Mehdi Karamipour Moghaddam, a former secretary general of the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, as saying that Iraq has set up more than 7,000 poultry farms with equipment purchased from Iran, resulting in an increase of egg production in the country from 1.5 billion in 2019 to 7 billion in the previous year. “Iraq almost no longer needs Iranian chickens and eggs, and sometimes issues short-term import permits” to meet temporary demands in the market.

Earlier in the week, Shargh reported that the sharp rise in animal feed prices 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.