EGYPT

"Long live the courgette, down with red meat!"

This is the slogan that the Egyptians have adopted since the price of a kilo of red meat rose above 60 Egyptian pounds (eight euros).

Issued on: 28/04/2010 - 15:16Modified: 06/10/2010 - 10:15

2 min

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Red meat on a market stall in Cairo. Photo posted on Flickr by "furibond".

This is the slogan that the Egyptians have adopted since the price of a kilo of red meat rose above 60 Egyptian pounds (eight euros).

In just two weeks, the price of both imported and local red meat increased by up to 80% in early April. In response to the astronomical price hike, a number of organisations are staging a boycott of the product.

The movement has produced a number of Facebook groups (see here and here), and has managed to garner attention by staging some controversial demonstrations. On 23 April, the sale of half-price meat in Alexandria almost turned sour when wholesalers and butchers arrived at the scene and tried to stop the transactions from going ahead. On 26 April, thousands of restaurants across the country refused to serve red meat to their clients.

In the late 1980s Cairo's rich tried to boycott red meat after the price for a kilo reached 10 Egyptian pounds (€1.30), which they considered outrageous at the time...

Boycott banner

Banner calling for the boycott in Heliopolis. Video posted on Facebook .

“There’s usually a queue of about 40 people at the butcher’s, but in the last few days, I’ve seen just three or four in line”

Mohamed Sorour is a pharmaceutical sales representative from Damietta, 200km north of Cairo.

With the financial crisis prices here have gone through the roof. The current price of red meat follows an increase in the cost of feed on the international market, but there are also other reasons behind it. A lot of people are accusing the wholesalers and the butchers of putting the prices even higher than they need to be, while the butchers blame the increase on the rarity of meat. In the late 1970s, President Anwar Sedat enforced that farmers let their cows live for over two years so that they had time to reproduce. Today, calves are slaughtered from the age of two or three months. That's why I think there's a dearth of livestock.

The boycott campaign is a great success because the situation is getting critical. There's usually a queue of about 40 people at the butcher's, but in the last few days, I've seen just three or four in line. Another reason is that the consumers and the government are in agreement on the subject. Both are against the high prices.

That said, I do think that we need to moderate our consumption of red meat. We don't need to eat it every day. In fact, eating too much red meat can cause serious illnesses. So perhaps this price hike is a case of serendipity."