What does it look like?
• The average price of the sacrifice last year reached 200 US dollars (20 million pounds), while this year it is between 250 and 300 dollars.
• The price of a kilo of lamb in Lebanon on normal days is approximately one million and 600 thousand Lebanese pounds (about 16 dollars).
• Many families dispense with red meat during the days of the month and replace it with grains and chicken meat due to its low cost, if it is available.
Movement without blessing
Abu Fares, the owner of a butchery in the southern town of Shebaa, says, “The sacrifices this year are expensive, and the price of a kilo of lamb from the sacrifice is about $6, and this is a high price, as the price of the sacrifice, if its weight is between 45 and 50 kilograms, is about $300.”
He added, “Every year I sold about 150 sacrifices, and this year many of my customers were content with asking, while others reserved only a limited number of sacrifices.”
And he continues: “Buying sacrificial animals, feeding them for at least a week, and preparing them for slaughter on the day of Eid has become costly, with the high price of fodder and gasoline to transport them.
On the other hand, the butcher Muhammad Zahra, in the southeast of the country, was not certain of the lull in the movement of selling sacrifices in the coming week, but he told Sky News Arabia: “The book reads from its title, and the market is a movement without blessing.”
Zahra added, “At such times, most of the merchants and associations that wish to perform the sacrifices usually begin to reserve their sacrifices and pay for them in advance to receive them on the day of the feast.”
For his part, butcher Muhammad Marei from the city of Sidon, in the south of the country, told Sky News Arabia, “The grills are for those who can. Customers ask about the price of a kilo of grills and do not buy it, so how will you buy the lamb?”
He continues, “I used to slaughter more than 500 sacrifices only in the first two days of Eid al-Adha, and some NGOs were asking me to secure more than 300 sacrifices to distribute to the needy.”
He explains: “During the current year, the rate of slaughtering livestock in the Sidon market has decreased significantly compared to last year, as the number of slaughtered daily was about 1,500 heads of sheep and goats, but today it does not exceed 300 heads only.”
Prices vary
In a field tour of “Sky News Arabia” in the capital, Beirut, the large differences in prices appeared between one region and another, and sometimes between a butchery and a neighboring one, which indicates the absence of censorship and the exploitation of some of the current crisis.
A head of a family says in a chat with Sky News Arabia, “The usual victim is the Lebanese citizen, specifically an employee in the public sector, whose salary is now worth only a few kilograms of meat.”
Hopes are pinned on expatriate dollars
Amidst this despondency evident on the faces of the Lebanese street, there are those who described the situation as good this year, as one of the butchers in Beirut explained the following:
• People are currently buying sacrifices, so that the available numbers are reserved, but for individuals from the expatriates who are awaiting their arrival in the country before the Eid.
• Some do not own the fresh dollar as before, but we did not touch this matter as merchants this year because Eid al-Adha coincided with the arrival of expatriate money with the start of the summer season.
• Prices have increased slightly, but we place our hopes on visitors to Lebanon and the people in the world of alienation.
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