Chicken shortage

Ot­to Car­ring­ton & Pe­ter Christo­pher

Con­sumers fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing chick­en at some re­tail out­lets are be­ing told to ex­pect re­lief in the com­ing weeks, with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture say­ing in­creased chick­en avail­abil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to en­ter the pro­duc­tion pipeline with­in the next two weeks.

In a me­dia state­ment, Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram yes­ter­day said the cur­rent short­age of poul­try sup­plies is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored and is the re­sult of a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, in­clud­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly hot weath­er, rather than a fun­da­men­tal short­age of pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

The min­istry said chick­en re­mains avail­able on the mar­ket, al­though some con­sumers may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty ob­tain­ing their usu­al quan­ti­ties at par­tic­u­lar su­per­mar­kets and re­tail out­lets.

Rati­ram’s as­sur­ance comes as poul­try farm­ers told Guardian Me­dia they have been forced to re­duce the num­ber of birds be­ing placed on farms to cope with the ex­treme heat in re­cent months.

The min­is­ter said ex­cep­tion­al­ly hot weath­er has placed sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on poul­try pro­duc­tion, forc­ing farm­ers to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al heat-man­age­ment mea­sures and, in some cas­es, re­duce bird place­ments to pro­tect live­stock.

He said those re­duc­tions are a pru­dent re­sponse to the weath­er con­di­tions.

“Tem­po­rary re­duc­tions in place­ment are a pru­dent mea­sure to pro­tect bird wel­fare, main­tain healthy growth and min­imise heat-re­lat­ed loss­es,” Rati­ram said.

The min­is­ter warned that farm­ers main­tain­ing nor­mal stock­ing lev­els dur­ing ex­treme heat could face in­creased mor­tal­i­ty and re­duced pro­duc­tion.

“As weath­er con­di­tions im­prove, place­ment lev­els are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to nor­mal,” he said.

The as­sur­ance comes amid re­ports from con­sumers of dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing chick­en or ob­tain­ing their usu­al quan­ti­ties at some su­per­mar­kets and re­tail out­lets. (See oth­er sto­ry)

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said chick­en re­mains avail­able to con­sumers and that the min­istry is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion, while en­gag­ing poul­try pro­duc­ers, hatch­eries, im­porters and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

He said he has been ad­vised that chick avail­abil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to in­crease over the next two weeks.

That in­crease, how­ev­er, will not trans­late in­to an im­me­di­ate in­crease in chick­en on su­per­mar­ket shelves and at poul­try de­pots.

The ad­di­tion­al chicks must first move through the nor­mal pro­duc­tion cy­cle, with the min­istry pro­ject­ing that poul­try sup­plies will pro­gres­sive­ly in­crease and re­turn to full lev­els ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks there­after.

The Agri­cul­ture Min­istry there­fore ex­pects the cur­rent tight­en­ing of sup­ply to ease over the com­ing weeks.

Broil­er Grow­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Sudesh Ramkissoon yes­ter­day said farm­ers who would nor­mal­ly house 10,000 birds are re­duc­ing place­ments to as few as 7,000 to pro­tect the birds from heat stress and avoid po­ten­tial­ly heavy loss­es.

“This is the hottest part of the year and, mon­i­tor­ing El Niño, it would be risky to op­er­ate farms at nor­mal ca­pac­i­ty,” Ramkissoon said.

He said push­ing farms to their nor­mal ca­pac­i­ty un­der cur­rent con­di­tions could re­sult in bird deaths, slow­er growth and poor­er pro­duc­tion.

“The risk of op­er­at­ing at nor­mal ca­pac­i­ty could re­sult not on­ly in loss­es due to heat stress but al­so poor pro­duc­tion as the birds can­not deal with the heat,” he said.

Ramkissoon said the in­dus­try is al­so fac­ing in­creas­ing pres­sure over wa­ter, with farm­ers hav­ing to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al cool­ing mea­sures, in­clud­ing sprin­klers on poul­try-house roofs.

But with wa­ter sup­plies re­strict­ed and ponds run­ning low, he said farm­ers are now hav­ing to fac­tor wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty in­to pro­duc­tion de­ci­sions.

“Wa­ter man­age­ment has be­come a new fac­tor to con­sid­er as farm­ers have to in­stall sprin­klers in the roofs. But with re­strict­ed sup­ply and ponds low, wa­ter man­age­ment is now a fac­tor at play,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ramkissoon re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that the re­duc­tion in bird place­ments amounts to a chick­en short­age.

Some restau­rants have con­firmed they too have been im­pact­ed by the short­age.

On Tues­day, Pap­py’s Fried Chick­en in­formed cus­tomers that the brand had been im­pact­ed by the short­age via a so­cial me­dia post. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny con­firmed that it has had to ra­tion chick­en to keep its branch­es open and is­sued the no­tice to man­age cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions.

Pap­py’s di­rec­tor Shahin­der Singh said it was not the first time there has been a short­age, but said it was un­for­tu­nate as Ju­ly/Au­gust is a peak pe­ri­od for sales.

“We couldn’t get our nor­mal amount for one, we nor­mal­ly take like 40 to 60 cas­es of chick­en a week, and you won’t get the sizes you usu­al­ly get. Even the price went up be­fore this ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened, so I guess they kind of knew what was hap­pen­ing from be­fore,” Singh said.

“But every year they do this, to be hon­est. Every year there’s some kind of short­age or some kind of pull­back, but they said it is ex­pect­ed to reg­u­late in with­in two to three weeks. But it was tough. I mean, one store we were close to clos­ing just be­cause we didn’t have enough chick­en for the two branch­es.”

But Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed CEO Si­mon Hardy said KFC and oth­er restau­rants un­der the com­pa­ny’s um­brel­la were not af­fect­ed by the short­age, as the com­pa­ny had de­vel­oped a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Arawak to avoid such sit­u­a­tions.

On Mon­day, the Darul Uloom Ha­laal Coun­cil (DUHC) al­so is­sued a no­tice on short­age, ad­vis­ing mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to ver­i­fy that chick­en was sourced from Ha­lal ver­i­fied sources.