DA intervenes to arrest poultry prices
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has put in place measures to stabilize the rising price of poultry products brought about by higher demand for chicken and low production.
In a statement, Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) director Reildrin Morales said the DA has lined up interventions that include raising the production and stabilizing the supply and market price of poultry products.
The measures include allowing interisland movement from mainland Luzon of day-old chicks, hatching eggs and ready to lay pullets.
For day-old chicks and hatching eggs, movement is allowed provided they tested negative for avian influenza (AI) 28 days from the date of sample collection.
For ready to lay pullets, movement is allowed provided they tested negative for AI 14 days from the date of sample collection.
BAI is still determining the actual supply scenario by working closely with partners from the private sector in regularly validating the broiler life cycle model.
To address the high cost of agriculture inputs, Morales said DA executives would conduct dialogues with other countries on possible alternative sources of cheaper feed ingredients.
On other disease concerns, the BAI said it has issued special import permits for vaccines in order to support disease prevention on other poultry diseases such as Infectious Body Hepatitis (IBH).
To help augment supply, the DA recently lifted the temporary ban for poultry products coming from Spain, Denmark, Czech Republic.
Morales said the increase in demand was caused by the opening of markets, including hotels and restaurants, now that pandemic restrictions are more relaxed.
Moreover, with the economy slowly opening up and creating job opportunities, more consumers have purchasing power to buy meat for their families.
“The uneven demand-supply situation may also be attributed to the restrictions in movement of live birds, poultry products and by-products due to Avian Influenza (AI) cases in some areas,” Morales said.
The BAI has also monitored a decrease in the volume of production due to high cost of feed inputs, along with challenges on other hepatitis diseases. These could also be attributed to stunted growth of poultry birds.
In an interview over One News last week, United Broilers and Raisers Association president Elias Jose Inciong said there is now a shortage in the quality of chicken available in the market, which is a different kind of chicken shortage the country had in 2003.
Currently, the poultry industry cannot deliver the kind of sizes required by certain sectors of the market.
“It’s a quality and performance problem from the farms and producers,” Inciong said.
In the past few weeks, some stores of fastfood giants Jollibee Foods Corp. and McDonald’s have been unable to serve chicken meals as the sector does not have enough supply that meet standards.
Inciong urged President Marcos to convene a task force to get a clearer picture of the industry and to lay down a plan to address the quality issue on chicken supply.