Supply woes fade as chicken stocks surge

By Sheria Brathwaite

The chicken shortage in Barbados is officially over, Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir said Friday, giving an assurance that there will be an abundance of fresh poultry on supermarket shelves for Christmas.

Weir told Barbados TODAY that since November 18, poultry stock was gradually being replenished, but as of this week, there was so much chicken available that at least one retail outlet had to delay an order.

He said: “From the 18th of November we would have seen a significant improvement in the availability of fresh chicken on the supermarket shelves and that has remained constant. We have more chicken available to the supermarkets than they anticipated. I was told that one supermarket had to put off one of its orders because the shelves are so packed that they can’t keep up.”

There were low supplies of chicken in retail outlets since mid-August, and the situation worsened as weeks passed. Industry officials announced that the sector was experiencing challenges associated with the sweltering heat and other production problems.

Scores of consumers complained about sourcing poultry on radio programmes and social media. Food vendors and the management of many supermarket chains also vented their frustrations about the unavailability of chicken, with the latter, in some cases, putting restrictions on how many chickens customers could buy. The shortage affected the fast-food industry, and some chains were forced to close periodically.

Weir said that this development should alleviate any fear that there would be a chicken shortage for the holidays and for the government-sponsored We Gatherin’ celebrations that are intended to attract Barbadians overseas.

“Consumers will have chicken consistently going into Christmas; there should be no talk about shortages of chicken anymore. I sincerely hope that this situation continues as we go into next year and as we supply for ‘We Gatherin’ throughout the year.”

Weir added that the meat on the shelves was not imported.

“All of the chicken on the shelves are locally labelled; we don’t put imported chicken on supermarket shelves.”

The minister said he was pleased about the rebound the poultry industry was making.

Weir said: “We have to give and take; I find that many times we are often too fast to criticise and don’t take time to understand the issues and this is not a good thing for our country. The poultry producers, whilst it is true that they should be held accountable for what took place, you cannot rule out the climate crisis. It is just not impacted Barbados, it is impacting the region and it is having a global impact. The poultry industry was impacted by the climate crisis where the mortality rates were higher than they have ever been. Then there were issues as it relates to management practices and feed and other variables that none of us were able to control.

“While people were not happy that there wasn’t a consistent supply of chicken on supermarket shelves, you cannot blame the government for those kinds of things. This is strictly all private sector operation and my role is to facilitate and support them as much as I can and that is what we [as a government] have been doing. We have made funds available for people to transition their businesses to be able to adapt to climate change, support them with training and put structures in place that they can benefit from.”

To significantly reduce the possibility of another shortage, Weir said that the industry, in association with the ministry and the Barbados Agricultural Society, launched an app to keep industry players well informed about the goings-on in the sector.

“We have an app in place that will be used for the poultry industry and generally for agriculture as well,” the minister said.

“It will tell us on a daily basis what is happening in the poultry industry so that we can get ahead of any challenges that may be presented and we can also monitor the daily hatches, the quantity of orders from small farmers, and how many have dropped out. That type of critical data we are now going to have to hand and that should help us to mitigate a repeat of the shortage we just saw.”

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb