Suppliers struggling due to poultry shortfall

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Poul­try op­er­a­tors in South Trinidad say they are re­ceiv­ing up to 50 per cent few­er birds, forc­ing some busi­ness­es to re­duce staff and, at times, close their doors as chick­en prices con­tin­ue to rise due to the short­fall.

The short­age has al­so re­sult­ed in small­er birds reach­ing the mar­ket, while the re­tail price of chick­en in parts of South Trinidad has in­creased from about $5.99 to as much as $9 per pound.

RN Poul­try own­er David Jit­ta yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that he was un­aware of the rea­son for the re­duced sup­ply but said the sit­u­a­tion had af­fect­ed his busi­ness.

“Some­times we have to close be­cause we’re not get­ting any sup­plies right now,” Jit­ta said.

He said the busi­ness would nor­mal­ly em­ploy four work­ers, but be­cause there was less poul­try to process, on­ly two work­ers were cur­rent­ly be­ing em­ployed.

Jit­ta said the sup­ply prob­lems had been on­go­ing for sev­er­al months.

At the Lal­be­har­ry Chick­en De­pot, a source said the busi­ness pre­vi­ous­ly sold about 7,000 chick­ens per week but was now re­ceiv­ing be­tween 3,000 and 4,000 birds.

The re­duced sup­ply has al­so af­fect­ed con­sumers, with some cus­tomers turn­ing to oth­er types of meat be­cause of the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty and in­creased price of chick­en.

St Mary’s Hatch­ery own­er Vi­jay Bhag­wat said his sup­ply of chicks from the Unit­ed States had de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly, adding that the wider poul­try sec­tor was be­ing af­fect­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al dis­rup­tions, in­clud­ing an avian in­fluen­za out­break which has dec­i­mat­ed breed­ing flocks in sev­er­al coun­tries.

He ex­plained that this has im­pact­ed the lo­cal fer­tilised hatch­ing egg mar­ket and re­duced the num­ber of chicks avail­able for ex­port and im­port.

Bhag­wat said hatch­eries were al­so fac­ing in­con­sis­tent re­sults, with hatch rates in some cas­es falling be­low the ex­pect­ed av­er­age of around 65 per cent. He not­ed that some lo­cal hatch­eries were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ad­di­tion­al in­cu­ba­tion prob­lems linked to equip­ment mal­func­tion, fur­ther tight­en­ing sup­ply to the do­mes­tic mar­ket.

He added that in many cas­es, con­tract farms were be­ing pri­ori­tised over the gen­er­al su­per­mar­kets, where lim­it­ed sup­ply dy­nam­ics were push­ing prices up­ward.

Bhag­wat al­so point­ed to broad­er pro­duc­tion chal­lenges, in­clud­ing heat stress af­fect­ing bird mor­tal­i­ty and re­duced lay­ing per­for­mance, as well as pos­si­ble feed qual­i­ty is­sues. He said sam­ples had been sent abroad for analy­sis, but new ex­port re­stric­tions had com­pli­cat­ed test­ing pro­ce­dures.

He fur­ther not­ed that im­port con­straints from the Unit­ed States had lim­it­ed the abil­i­ty to sup­ple­ment lo­cal short­ages, with sup­pli­ers in­di­cat­ing re­duced avail­abil­i­ty even at short no­tice.

Cus­tomers yes­ter­day con­firmed they were hav­ing trou­ble sourc­ing a sup­ply.Nan­cy Chaitoo said at a poul­try de­pot in Pe­nal, cus­tomers could get no more than two chick­ens.

Cus­tomer Franklyn Ram­sa­roop said the heat waves were caus­ing the short­age.

“Not all the farms have prop­er in­su­la­tion, so they can­not pro­duce as they want,” he said, adding he was grate­ful some sup­pli­ers were still able to pro­duce in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties.

In Debe, how­ev­er, cus­tomer Shiv­ani Ghisayawan said the chick­en short­ages should not re­al­ly af­fect cus­tomers that much be­cause there are al­ter­na­tives.

“We have a wide range of veg­eta­bles to eat, and we can buy fish or any oth­er kind of meat if we can­not get chick­en,” she said.

Over the past month, record heat lev­els have af­fect­ed poul­try farm­ers, who have been forced to re­duce their num­bers in­side their pens. Avian in­fluen­za has al­so af­fect­ed over 30 farm­ers in the US, hav­ing been spread by mi­gra­to­ry birds.