30% Decline in Dairy Product Consumption in Iran; Researchers Warn About Parasitic Contamination in Poultry Meat
Iran’s Ministry of Health says that with rising food prices, consumption of milk and dairy products has decreased by “approximately 30 percent.” Meanwhile, based on investigations by Iranian medical science researchers, a dangerous type of parasite has been found in consumed poultry meat.
According to ILNA’s report on Friday, December 17, Zahra Abdollahi, director general of the nutrition improvement office at the Ministry of Health, stated that overall consumption of milk and its derivatives in Iranians’ diet has always been below the recommended amount. She said that due to the economic consequences of coronavirus, inflation, and rising food prices, milk and dairy products have been “removed from some tables.”
The report referred to experts’ recommendations for daily consumption of at least two servings from the milk and dairy group, which means drinking one glass of milk or an equivalent amount of yogurt and approximately 50 grams of cheese.
Simultaneously, ISNA reported based on investigations by medical science researchers in the country about contamination of poultry meat (types of chickens and birds whose meat is used for nutrition) with the parasite “Toxoplasma gondii.”
Based on these investigations, contamination of poultry and similar bird meat with this type of parasite creates “serious concerns” and sufficient care must be taken in the production and consumption of ready-made and semi-prepared foods from such products.
In the report of this research conducted to measure “the rate of contamination of domestic chickens and roosters and those from industrial breeding with this parasite” by five researchers from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, the evolutionary course of this parasite was described, explaining that it “exists in three forms: oocyst, tachyzoite, and tissue cyst.” Of these, oocysts exist only in the cat’s body and are transmitted through cat feces to “water, vegetables, and other food materials,” and feeding poultry from these contaminated materials “causes the formation of numerous tissue cysts in their organs and tissues, which in turn can contaminate consumers of such meat.”
Maryam Shakrani, an economic reporter in Iran, referred to a part of this research that was not mentioned in the ISNA report and wrote in a Twitter thread that this parasite “causes complications in people with weak immunity” and is “particularly dangerous for pregnant women.”
She also referred to research at Shahrekord University that reported contamination of milk with this parasite.
Previously, Iran’s agricultural export products, including watermelon shipments from the UAE, tomatoes from Iraq, bell peppers from Russia, kiwis from India and China, and potatoes from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, were returned and received extensive media and political coverage.
Source: Voice of America
