Several years after the diaper shortage crisis, Hani Tahvilzadeh, the head of the Iranian Association of Powdered Milk and Baby Food Producers announced to the state-run media that the production of powdered milk in the country is also facing problems due to “lack of currency allocation” to the producers.
In an interview with the semi-official ILNA news agency and Radio Tehran, Tahvilzadeh accused Ebrahim Raisi’s administration of “transferring the production of powdered milk to a factory in Turkey” to meet the demand for powdered milk in Iran.
Regime’s officials have not yet responded to Tahvilzadeh’s claim.
He stated that the current crisis is occurring despite Iran never having faced a problem with powdered milk production, and that Iran has even been an exporter of this product in the past.
However, Tahvilzadeh explained that the problem of not allocating currency to powdered milk producers in Iran has intensified since last year, causing the production capacity of powdered milk in Iran to decrease from “10 million units per month to 5million units”.
He announced the closure of powdered milk production units due to “adopting this approach” and stated that currently, companies such as “Niksan Salamat Behbood” and “Pegah Shahrekord” are not producing, and “Behdashtkar” company only has enough raw materials for one month of production.
The head of the Association of Powdered Milk Producers continued by saying that if Iranian producers were allocated currency and were able to receive raw materials for production, a gradual increase in supply would be possible.
Tahvilzadeh told Radio Tehran that domestic production companies had repeatedly warned the government about this issue in the past, but Ebrahim Raisi’s administration did not pay attention to these warnings.
The budget for “Population Youthfulness” is 11 times greater than the subsidies for powdered milk and medicine, more than five times the emergency essential credits, and about twice the budget of the Red Crescent.
The regime’s officials have made contradictory statements regarding the reasons for the powdered milk crisis and how to solve it.
According to ILNA, Tahvilzadeh also did not confirm recent statements by Parvin Salehi, a member of the Health and Treatment Committee of the Majlis (Parliament), who had announced the end of shortages in powdered milk “in the next forty days”.
On October 24, Heydar Mohammadi, the head of the Food and Drug Organizationaffiliated with the Ministry of Health, claimed in an interview with the ILNA news agency that “there is currently no particular problem with powdered milk.”
Mohammadi claimed, “The current discussion regarding powdered milk is related to certain specific brands whose demand has exceeded their production. If the production of these specific brands reaches the number we have in mind, which is five million units per month, the problem will be solved.”
However, Rouhollah Hossein-Zadeh, the head of the Special Court for Combating Narcotics, announced that powdered milk in pharmacies is subject to rationing, but such restrictions do not apply for addictive substances such as methadone.
Mousa Abbaszadeh Mahmoudi, the Director-General of Governmental Discretionary Punishments Organization in Sistan and Baluchestan, also stated on October 30 that “smuggling of powdered milk has become prevalent in this province over the past three years.”
The shortage of powdered milk in Iran occurs while the officials encourage Iranian families to have more children.
During Hassan Rouhani’s government, the shortage of newborn diapers in Iran also became a crisis, and Ali Khamenei, the regime’s Supreme Leader, reacted to this crisis as well.
Khamenei claimed that the diaper shortage crisis in Iran was a “sabotage” by the opponents, and “the enemy wants to make the people angry with the government apparatus and the ruling system.”
