Iranian Shoppers Distraught as Chicken Becomes a Luxury Item

Chicken has long replaced red meat as part of the staple diet of Iranian families in financial hardship. But now even this commodity is now becoming unaffordable, with many people reduced to buying legs or skeletons. IranWire’s citizen journalist visited the markets of Tehran to understand the extent of Iran’s ongoing “chicken crisis”.

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At the beginning of the Persian calendar year 1399, chicken generally sold for 13,000 tomans [US$0.54] per kilogram. Now, in the first days of the new century, the price has swelled to 35,000 to 37,000 [$1.45 to $1.54] per kilo in central Tehran. A decent enough portion to feed a whole family is now out of reach for many citizens, whose anguish in the markets is plain.

"The price of chicken has tripled in a few months,” says one shop owner, “which has led to far fewer customers and not everyone being able to buy chicken. The number of buyers has halved. Last year, on New Year’s Eve, we bought 700 to 800 kilos per order, but this year we only bought 300 to 400 kilos per order.”

Asked about the current price of chicken, a customer in another shop nearby is exasperated. “We deserve it! We keep silent and they do whatever evil they want to us. Should the price of the chicken be 35,000 tomans per kilogram? I got in the chicken queue; after all that waiting, the seller eventually said ‘The chicken is finished, come tomorrow!’. Are we not human? Now I’ve bought this two-and-a-half-kilo chicken for 88,000 tomans. What is my salary? Four million tomans a month. How are we supposed to live?"

A woman in another shop is trying to buy a kilo of chicken legs. I ask her, when was the last time she had bought a whole chicken? "It was about six months ago," she says. "God damn the perpetrators of this situation. When I don’t have the money to buy meat, I buy chicken legs to make stews and soups for the kids. I wish we weren’t being so humiliated."

Many people trying to buy this staple food item in Iranian cities are left standing in long queues for “subsidized” and “regulated-market” chicken, below the free-market price. The crowds are forming in the midst of a fourth major outbreak of coronavirus in Iran, and at a time when the new, hyper-infectious strain of SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in various parts of the country.

A chicken seller in Tehran’s Ghaem-Magham Farahani Street weighs in on why the prices have increased to this level. “Soybeans and corn,” he says, “and the antibiotics they give to chickens, are all imported. Because of the increased value of the dollar, their prices have soared, and as a result, the cost of production and breeding on poultry farms has multiplied too.”

He indicates his shop floor. "Even now, it doesn’t feel like New Year. See for yourself that we have no customers. Last year, at this time of year, we would sell two van-loads of chicken a day. But now we don’t even sell half a van a day. People do not have the money.

“It’s hard for even me to believe that there are now more buyers of skeletons and chicken legs than of chicken itself. I wish the authorities would come and see the poverty of the people. How do they sleep at night? Honestly, sometimes I give free chicken to women I know are respectable and have a family. We have to support each other; the officials do not give a damn.”

This article was written by a citizen journalist in Tehran.

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