BEIRUT, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Hassan Salloum, a Lebanese citizen, spends hours walking among the herds of livestock in the al-Marj market in eastern Lebanon, looking for an affordable sheep to sacrifice, as the Eid al-Adha is only a few days away.
However, he balked at the "shocking and insane prices" of a sheep, knowing it was nearly impossible for an average household to buy one to perform the yearly ritual of slaughtering livestock for the Eid festival, the man told Xinhua.
Despite the tradition, which also bears the hallmark of sharing meat with the needy, was cherished by many, "the activity in the livestock markets is calm," Salloum lamented.
Sheep prices have increased by at least three times and vendors are demanding payment in U.S. dollars while salaries paid in Lebanese pounds have lost much of their value since the collapse of the national currency, he explained.
Every year during Eid al-Adha, Muslims who can perform livestock sacrifice are expected to donate at least one-third of the meat from the slaughtered animal to poor or vulnerable people, with one-third left for their own family and the final third for their neighbors.
"Lebanon's economic and financial crisis changed our yearly Eid traditions by affecting a big segment of the society," said Dalal Yaghi, a mother of seven children from the eastern town of Joub Jannine, adding prices of sacrifices skyrocketed in the past three years.
Meanwhile, Walid Hatoum, a man in his 50s from the town of Rashaya in eastern Lebanon, told Xinhua that he visited many livestock markets in eastern and southern Lebanon but still failed to buy a sacrifice at an acceptable price for his family of five.
"Livestock of all kinds are available in big numbers, but the sheep costs around 300 dollars which is almost three times my 85-dollar salary," Hatoum said, adding livestock traders uncontrollably increased their prices.
Jihad Abu Hamad, a livestock trader in eastern Lebanon, said farmers and livestock importers all prefer their transactions to be paid in greenback, which is exchanged at around 94,000 Lebanese pounds per dollar on the parallel market compared to 1,500 pounds before the crisis.
Since 2019, Lebanon has suffered from the worst financial crisis in its history, plunging over 80 percent of the population into poverty. The situation was further exacerbated by the rise of unemployment and collapse of the local currency that has led to the devaluation of salaries and the steep decline of Lebanese' purchasing power.
Moreover, Lebanon's food cost increased by 350 percent in April 2023 compared to last year.
Ahmed Darwish, who owns a butchery in the Ghazze, a village in eastern Lebanon, told Xinhua that Lebanon's economic crisis weighed heavily on the livestock market, with the smallest sheep costing no fewer than 200 dollars.
"In the years before the economic crisis, which began in 2019, I used to reserve more than 100 sacrifices for civil societies representatives on the first day of Eid al-Adha to be distributed to the needy. Today only seven have been reserved so far," Darwish said.
Eid al-Adha celebrations will begin on June 28 and last three days as a public holiday this year in Lebanon. ■
