Tehran, Iran, Feb.25
Trend:
Iran has approved the license to import some 300,000 tons of red meat by 247 companies, that are active in the field.
"The import license of 300,000 tons of red meat has been issued for 247 companies and there is no monopoly in red meat imports in the country," said the Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ali Akbar Mehrfard, Trend reports citing IRNA.
Referring to the problem of abandoned meat at the country's ports he said that the imported meat has arrived and the Central Bank of Iran has assigned official foreign currency rate to these cargos but the money has not been transferred to the retailers' accounts, therefore the domestic customers have no documents for the purchased meat to release the cargo."
"Providing imported meat is part of Agriculture Ministry's responsibilities, while the distribution is to be done by the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade and due to price gap between domestic and imported meat, the distribution of imported meat would become more targeted."
He also noted that the slaughter houses in Iran were given tracking codes by Iran's Veterinary Organization, so that the imported meat could be identified, as well as its exporter country, in each slaughter house.
The recent statistics by the Agriculture Ministry show that Iran's annual red meat consumption stands at 960,000 tons, which is mostly provided domestically, while some 15 percent is imported.
Iran Veterinary Organization has recently stated the country imported some 240,000 tons of red meat, and over 120,000 of that amount has arrived. The meat imports include frozen beef, fresh packaged beef, fresh and frozen sheep meat and live sheep.