Hundreds of thousands of baby chickens were buried alive in Iran on Friday due to feed shortage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to videos shared online.

A truckload of chicks were seen unloaded and then buried alive by a bulldozer in one video.

The number of chicks buried alive was 116,640, a man is heard saying in another video.

The videos have sparked an outcry on social media amongst Iranians.

“The decline in prices of live chickens and day-old chicks” as well as “severe shortages of corn and soybeans” are some of the problems faced by poultry breeders in Iran today, the head of the day-old chick producers’ association told the semi-official ISNA news agency on Saturday.

“Sharing these images online may have certain goals behind it,” Mohammad Reza Sedigh told ISNA.

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