Spain exports 40% more lambs for Ramadan. Arabia and Jordan, main destinations

Spanish operators have exported between 300,000 and 350,000 lambs to Muslim countries for Ramadan, which begins this week; a maximum increase of 40% compared to the 250,000 of the previous Ramadan The director of the interprofessional of sheep and goats (Interovic), Tomás Rodríguez, has conveyed to Efeagro the satisfaction of the sector for this year’s campaign that has focused its shipments to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to the detriment of other destinations that were important in previous years, such as Libya.

Libya is a destination now “overshadowed” after what happened with the ships “Karim Allah” and “Elbeik”: the two ships loaded with calves that left Spain in mid-December bound, first to Turkey and then to Libya, but which They rejected the landing of the cattle alleging doubts about the possibility that they were affected by the disease of the blue tongue, an extreme that was denied by the Spanish Government and the association of producers (Asoprovac).

The importance of the Saudi country is remarkable because it opened its borders to Spanish lamb in February 2020 and already this Ramadan it has become one of the main buyers. The case of Jordan is curious, according to Rodríguez, because it was open “for a long time” but it did not demand much Spanish cattle until “it was encouraged” when it saw the purchases of its Saudi neighbors.

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