Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods said it is losing about €1.47 million sterling ($1.8 million) of sales a day in the Middle East due to Muslim anger over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.
Spokesman for Arla Foods
Europe's second-largest dairy producer said today a boycott called last week against Danish cheese and butter had hit sales hard in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and throughout the region.
"We're losing about £1million sterling per day in turnover," said a spokesman for the group, which sells Lurpak butter, feta cheese and spreadable cheese in the region.
The Middle East is Arla's biggest market outside Europe, with annual revenue of around $500 million. Saudi Arabia accounts for 60 per cent of that.
Arla said its products had been taken off the shelves of shops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait and described the situation in Egypt and Lebanon as critical. Algeria, Morocco and Oman were less affected, it added.
Diplomatic relations soured between Denmark and a number of Muslim countries after Danish newspaper Jyllands-Postenpublished cartoons of Muhammad, including one in which he appeared to carry a bomb in his turban.
The outrage spread across the Islamic world today. Muslims condemned the cartoons as blasphemous, and more European newspapers published them, arguing for freedom of speech.
Up to 300 militant Indonesian Muslims went on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta, and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen summoned foreign envoys in Copenhagen to discuss the outcry.