Millions of live chickens have been buried in Iran, and many more will be dumped soon, says the chairman of the board of directors of the Tehran Poultry Farmers' Union.

Poultry farm owners were forced to bury fifteen million newborn chickens due to the lack of feed, and since there are no customers, they will soon dump hundreds of thousands of more hens, said Nasser Nabipour.

A video widely circulated on social media shows hundreds of thousands of newborn chickens being buried alive by a bulldozer in Iran.

Nasser Nabipour maintained that one-day-old chickens should be bought within 24 hours after they hatch, and transferred to poultry farms across Iran; otherwise, they should be destroyed.

Furthermore, Nabipour has warned that, due to the outbreak of coronavirus, there are no customers for the baby chickens, and if the trend continues, the poultry farmers will soon bury "all their chickens alive."

The circulation of the video has triggered a series of criticisms for the move, described as "barbaric" and "ruthless" by many social media users.

Days after the circulation of the footage, President Hassan Rouhani, instructed the Minister of Intelligence to "prosecute" all responsible for the massacre of millions of one-day-old chickens.

Defending the move, the secretary of the "One-Day Chicken Manufacturers Association", Mohammad Reza Sadiqpour told the state-run Iran Students News Agency (ISNA), "The chickens were dumped since the price of live poultry and one-day-old chickens has sharply dropped."

According to Mr. Sadiqpour, in the last two months, due to the coronavirus crisis, the consumption of chicken has decreased. Therefore, producers started destroying their one-day-old chickens to balance the market.

Sadiqpour also disclosed that poultry farmers suffer from a severe shortage of corn and soybeans due to the government's failure to allocate currency for imports.

Source: Radio Farda – 26^th April 2020

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