Outrage in Egypt over killing chicks due to fodder shortage

Poultry producers in Egypt have been suffocating chicks to death due to a shortage of chicken fodder, video footage circulating on social media showed, which drove people to become angry and pushed the government to hold an emergency meeting to solve the problem.

Social media users voiced their dissatisfaction and anger after seeing hundreds of chicks killed, saying, “For what sin were they killed?”

Egyptian Minister of Agriculture El Sayyed Al Quseir told the talk show “On My Responsibility” on Saturday that this is an individual incident, but Egypt’s poultry industry is facing a crisis due to the global economic crisis that has slowed the movement of imports and exports.

Vice President of the General Federation of Poultry (GFP) Tharwat Al-Zayni said on his Facebook page that the video is real and that the issue is due to a shortage of feed, adding, “We have appealed to the government in the past weeks to release the feed [from the customs].”

He noted that a large number of chicken factories stopped production due to the lack of feed that resulted from soya bean cargoes not being released from the ports after the failure to obtain hard currency for more than two months.

Seeking self-sufficiency as fodder prices increase

In comments to local media, Zayni said on Sunday that Egypt has achieved self-sufficiency in poultry production by producing about 4 million chickens and 400 million eggs daily.

He added that over the past six years, production of poultry and eggs increased by 60%, and it is expected to reach 100% in 2030.

However, the head of the Farmers’ Syndicate, Hussein Abdelrahman Abu Saddam, said in a statement on Sunday that killing chicks will lead to a rise in poultry prices in the near future, the deterioration of poultry wealth, and the depletion of hard currency needed to import chickens to meet the needs of the increasing demand for poultry and eggs.

The price of fodder has reached 16,000 EGP per ton, compared to 8,000 EGP per ton before the supply shortage, marking a 100% increase, he noted.

Abu Saddam called on the House of Representatives to enact legislation preventing the killing of chicks and to hold the killers of the chicks accountable. Meanwhile, the price of soya beans needed for the fodder industry sharply rose to 17,000 EGP per ton from 9,000 EGP per ton, he noted, adding that the price of yellow corn went up to 9,000 EGP from 5,000 EGP per ton.

On the same note, the price of one chick sharply declined to 2 EGP from 16 EGP due to the low rate of demand, he said.

Quick action to contain the crisis

The Egyptian government, led by Prime Minister Mosfata Madbouli, decided to release a specific amount of fodder weekly to the General Federation of Poultry (GFP), in addition to setting up a mechanism to monitor the distribution of the would-be released quantities, according to a statement from the Egyptian Cabinet on Sunday.

The decision also included the release of 60,000 tons of soya beans needed for the fodder industry, at a cost of $44 million.

The government statement attributed the reason of this crisis to “the negative repercussions of the global crisis, which affected many commodities and other products, not just the fodder designated for this industry.”

The Prime Minister assured poultry producers that the government is coordinating with the Central Bank to expedite the release of the largest possible amount of fodder.

However, the head of the Poultry Division at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, Abdul Aziz El Sayyed, said that the country is suffering a 50% deficit of fodder supply, noting in comments to Al Arabiya Network that despite the release of 15%, this did not contribute to solving the crisis.

“The current crisis is greater than the bird flu crisis,” he continued.