Nazim Abdullah, head of the Poultry Breeders Association in Sulaymaniyah and Karmian, revealed that the ban on exporting live chickens from the Kurdistan Region to other Iraqi cities has been ongoing for about 6 months, causing losses exceeding 80 billion Iraqi dinars for poultry farm owners .
“We have been facing a problem for about 6 months due to the inability to export live chickens to the cities of central and southern Iraq, which hinders our ability to market our products and maintain their quality. We have contacted the Agriculture Committee in the Iraqi Parliament, and we demand that the Iraqi government allow the distribution of the products of the Kurdistan Region farms in the Iraqi markets to find a solution to this crisis, ” Abdullah said.
Abdullah pointed out that the main reason behind this crisis is the import of large quantities of frozen chicken, which reduced the import of live chicken from the region, with the Iraqi government taking measures to prevent the entry of chicken into the cities of the center and south. This led to huge losses for breeders, as the amount of live chicken production exceeded the needs of the local market, which made it necessary to provide external outlets for marketing to the cities of Iraq .
Abdullah stressed that the poultry farms in the region have the capacity to meet the local market’s needs for chicken and eggs in abundant quantities, and that they even produce quantities that exceed local needs, as the price of a kilo of chicken in the region’s markets today ranges between 2,500 and 2,600 Iraqi dinars.
