50% reduction in red meat consumption in Iran

Mansour Pourian, head of the Iranian Livestock Supply Council, has said that "the economic conditions of the people and the coronavirus" have caused a recession in the red meat market and a 50% decrease in red meat consumption in Iran.

In an interview published on Friday, August 6, in the ILNA news agency, he stated that the usual annual consumption of red meat in Iran is one million tons and said, "Now the consumption has been reduced by half, to 500,000 tons."

He also reported on the shortage of fodder, drought, water supply crisis, and the economic difficulties of livestock farmers in purchasing livestock inputs, saying that these issues have caused red meat production to "turn into a loss-making economic activity."

In the past decade, numerous reports have been published about the decline in red meat consumption in Iran.

According to estimates by the Statistical Center of Iran, per capita consumption of red meat in the country in 2011 was about 13 kilograms, which decreased continuously until 2019, falling to 8 kilograms. Thus, from 2011 to 2019, Iranians' consumption of red meat decreased by 38.5 percent.

The Statistics Center has not yet published a report on the country's red meat consumption in 2019, but some estimates showed that per capita meat consumption fell below 5 kilograms last year.

Source: Radio Farda