 |
Wholesalers accused of high meat prices for import permits
“The number of livestock declined 1.8 percent last year over the previous year and this should have been reflected in the prices with, at most, a 10 percent increase in meat prices. However, the prices went up as much as 70 percent in order to get permits for importing cheaper meat from abroad,” Kaya said in an interview with the Anatolia news agency on Sunday.
Kaya also noted that some circles, especially the wholesale firms, were causing a price hike on purpose by not putting animals on the market.
The union has already filed complaints about a number of meat producers and wholesale companies to the Competition Authority over cartel-like behavior, such as secret agreements among them to keep prices at the current high levels. In addition, Kaya also objected to calls to boycott purchasing meat, saying people must not stop eating meat products, which are an invaluable source of protein.
The wholesale price of a kilo of meat (low grade beef) was around TL 9.50 in May 2009, as of today it is TL 15.50. The retail price has increased from TL 18 to TL 35 per kilo.
The high cost of meat was also on Chamber of Agriculture Engineers (ZMO) President Gökhan Günaydın’s agenda. He shared his assessment on the causes of the high prices at a press conference in Ankara. “The problems in animal husbandry cannot be solved with import permits. Instead, an effective battle against the unregistered economy and the unlicensed slaughtering of animals are required to achieve a sound solution,” he noted.
While the average European consumes approximately 75 kilos of red meat every year, that figure is just eight kilos in Turkey, he asserted, arguing that the high cost of meat in Turkey when compared to Europe has led to insufficient red meat consumption in the country.
Turkish Union of Agricultural Chambers (TZOB) President Şemsi Bayraktar also rejected the use of import permits as a measure to overcome the meat sector’s price problem, saying measures aiming to boost production should be adopted instead. In a written statement on Sunday, he noted that a recent rise in meat exports to some Middle Eastern countries also contributed to the destabilization of the domestic market’s supply and demand balance, triggering extraordinary hikes in the price of lamb and beef.
Other factors that led to the increase in prices included last year’s excessive slaughtering due to the low meat and milk prices, the increasing cost of feed and other production inputs and the problem of finding adequate feed due to the scorching heat during the past two summers.
Like consumers, Bayraktar also accused those who called on the government to allow meat imports of deliberately pushing up prices. Those who only watched as sheep breeding started to die down and those who did not object when nearly 1 million breeding cows were being slaughtered are now lobbying in favor of imports, he said.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| MELİH ARAT |  |
||
| Handmade | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
