© AFPAn Egyptian man rides a donkey with his sheep in the town of Qanater al-Khayreya, north of the capital Cairo, on 15 July 2021
"Why don't we eat donkey and horse meats? They are sold and eaten in many countries," Tamer Amin, the host of the Akher al-Nahar (Arabic for late afternoon) show on the local al-Nahar television channel, said on 8 March.
Comment: Says the man who won't be eating it.
"Horse meat is very healthy and safe, and I believe it is not religiously forbidden," he added, a day before Egypt's statistics agency announced that urban consumer inflation has shot to a five-and-a-half-year high, reaching 31.9 percent.
The comments have been criticised by religious scholars, who emphasised that donkey and horse meats are "haram" or proscribed by Islamic law.
The prices of food and basic commodities, mostly imported, have more than doubled since the Egyptian pound was devalued at the beginning of this year.
This came after the International Monetary Fund approved a bailout with Cairo in December, the third deal since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in a 2013 military coup.
The value of the Egyptian pound against the US dollar dropped from seven EGP in 2013 to just above 30 EGP at the time of publication.
A shift to a flexible exchange rate regime is among the main conditions of the international lender to reduce inflation and consolidate the country's spiralling debts.
Prior to the deal and the devaluation, Egypt had already been reeling from the dual impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Covid-19 pandemic on the import-dependent economy.
But the fiscal measures have had immediate effects on the majority of Egypt's 104 million population, with an estimated 60 million people living below or just above the poverty line ($3.20 per day) before the current crisis.
The government last week also raised gasoline prices by around 10 percent to fulfill requirements of subsequent IMF deals to bring fuel prices in line with changes in global oil prices.
'I've stopped buying meat'
Amin's remarks are reminiscent of a call earlier this year by the National Institute for Nutrition for people to switch to eating chicken feet, as a good and cheap source of protein instead of the rest of the chicken. The suggestion has since provoked backlash and ridicule, as chicken feet are not popular in Egyptian cuisine. They are usually thrown away or sold to factories that process chicken products.
Meat prices are reaching dramatic heights in Egypt, making it off limits for not only the poor, but also most members of the middle class.
Comment: A reduction in meat consumption will inevitably lead to the worsening health of more people, and a susceptibility to infection and disease.
Egypt imports almost half of the 900,000 tonnes of meat it consumes every year.
The average price of meat rose in the local market from 180 Egyptian pounds (roughly $6) a kilo to 330 pounds (about $11) a kilo in a matter of a few months, as the Egyptian currency lost half its value since March last year.
Poultry prices have spiked as well, leaving poor and middle class Egyptians with limited animal protein options.
"I have stopped buying meat a long time ago because of these high prices," schoolteacher Rahma Saeed, who is a mother of three children, told MEE.
"Has it come to this?" Mamdouh Mohamed, a tailor in his mid-fifties, asked.
"I can never eat donkey or horse meat," he told MEE.
Nevertheless, many consumers may have already eaten donkey meat without even knowing it, at meat stalls which are ubiquitous on Cairo's streets and other Egyptian cities.
The stalls which sell cooked offal and animal meat cuts such as tongues, tripe and tails are very popular among Egyptians.
However, the purported owner of a chain of restaurants that serves cooked organ meat shocked the nation a few days ago when he claimed that most offal stalls serve donkey meats to their customers.
Comment: This isn't limited to Egypt, even Western countries have been rocked by scandals of horse meat being sold as beef. However we can expect the adulteration and fraudulant sale of food to worsen, everywhere - including the West - as food shortages do; 'shrinkflation' is just the mild beginning.
The owners of these stalls, the man said, cannot afford the price of organ meats from livestock.
Egypt's President Sisi has previously attacked the media, most of it controlled by the state, for their coverage of the latest crisis around the cost of food in the country.
"Why do you portray Egyptians as if they are in a state of panic over food and drink? This is not appropriate," he said on 23 January. "I am not saying this is not true, but eating and drinking is not the end of the world," the president said.
Widening food gap
Some of the nation's restaurants reportedly serve donkey meat, instead of livestock meat, due to high prices.
This also comes amid a spike in reports about the random slaughter of donkeys in different parts of Egypt.
This has forced food specialists to take to the airwaves to explain to the public the difference between donkey meat and livestock meat.
Some people also say that donkeys, which are usually used in Egypt for transport, are slaughtered for their skin, which is exported to China.
"The rise in the prices has even become burdensome for financially-capable people," Alaa Ahmed, a salesman in his early forties, told MEE. "The government has little control over the market, giving traders the chance to exaggerate prices the way they want."
Hesham al-Dugwi, the head of the food section at the Giza Chamber of Commerce, told MEE that the rise in food prices in the international market has placed unprecedented pressures on foreign currency reserves in the country.
"It is also widening the food gap, for the first time in years."
Egypt to withdraw from UN grain treaty to reduce dollar dependency
Egypt has given notice that it will withdraw in June from a UN grain treaty after deeming it provided "no added value" to the import-dependent country.
Egypt is one of the world's top wheat importers and the reports on Friday that it would be leaving the 1995 Grains Trade Convention (GTC), which promotes market transparency to further trade cooperation, was greeted with dismay by other signatories.
"This came without prior information," Arnaud Petit, executive director of the London-based International Grains Council, which administers the treaty, told Reuters.
"Several delegations within the IGC are surprised and sad about the decision."
The decision was made, according to Reuters, after an assessment by Egypt's ministries of supply and trade concluded the country's membership in the council delivered "no added value".
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Egypt owed the IGC membership fees.
Middle East Eye has reached out to the Ministry of Supply for comment but has not received a response by the time of publication.
Egypt imports most of its food needs, a dependency which has exacerbated the country's economic crisis in the midst of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Egypt relied on Russia and Ukraine for around 80 percent of its wheat imports.
The prices of food and basic commodities, mostly imported, have more than doubled since the Egyptian pound was devalued at the beginning of this year.
This came after the International Monetary Fund approved a bailout for Cairo in December, the third deal since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in a 2013 military coup.
The value of the Egyptian pound against the US dollar dropped from seven in 2013 to just above 30 at the time of publication.
A shift to a flexible exchange rate regime is among the main conditions of the international lender to reduce inflation and consolidate the country's spiralling debts.
Abdel Ghaffar al-Salamoni, deputy head of the grains section at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, said that Egypt's withdrawal from the GTC comes in the wake of studies by the ministry of supply, which showed that the convention "does not serve Egypt's best economic interests".
"Egypt strives to reduce dependence on the US dollar as a currency in international trade," he said. "It also wants to deal with major grains trading partners, such as Russia and India, directly."
Salamoni added that Egypt wants to pay for Russian grain imports in the Russian currency and to exchange fertilisers for Indian grain shipments.
He added that the government needs to get rid of the annual fees charged by the IGC.
"Egypt is taking this decision at the right time. It knows that Russia will not allow any grain shipments to come out of Ukrainian ports. Egypt will get its grain imports from suppliers without dependence on the dollar," he told MEE.
Sherif Fyad, an agricultural economics professor at the Desert Research Center, an affiliate of the Ministry of Agriculture, also argued that the withdrawal "will serve Egypt's best interests.
"Cairo wants to reduce dependence on the dollar by approaching countries with which it can deal with their local currencies, including Russia and China," he said.
"Other members of the convention are just afraid that Egypt's withdrawal will cause other countries to follow suit," he told MEE.
The further people buy into the BS of pseudo-nutrition & engineered meats while trying to accompany / justify their own preferences or cult of mass psychosis trends the more damage they will do to their natural creators design.- e.g. GMO Frankenfoods the further they will harm themselves by introducing unnatural foods into their own systems.
Can’t fix willful ignorance of the human condition only separate the divide further.