As plans to lower the price of chicken and poultry products continue to be rolled out, a call is being made for officials to seriously look at offering better prices for chicken wings and other frozen chicken parts.
Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) James Paul raised the issue as consumers continued to call for lower prices on frozen chicken.
He said: “There needs to be a rethink as it relates to chicken wings, where you have to work with the processors to see how that frozen chicken can be sold.
“I think they need to have a discussion with the processors to see what deals can be made. You have a situation where people who are in the food business make tons of money from the chicken wings, and here you have other parts of the chicken they do not want to work with the processors on. That is the problem,” said Paul.
The price for eggs, chicken and poultry products was increased about a year ago due to what some farmers indicated then was a rise in packaging of the items.
However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Barbados back in March this year, poultry producers almost immediately experienced a dramatic fall in demand for their products.
This prompted several of them to put items in cold storage. However, with less revenue coming in and cold storage costs facing them, some have started to offer specials.
“We will be discounting frozen chicken in order to move that cold store stock. There will be some level of fresh production because there is always a need for some fresh chicken … but it will be significantly scaled back to less than half of what it used to be,” Managing Director of Chickmont Foods Ltd Edward Albecker indicated recently.
Government, through the Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC), recently put a pause on the importation of chicken wings and other poultry products.
That two-month ban, which took effect on May 25, was intended to give local poultry producers space to get rid of products they had in cold storage. It is anticipated that where possible, some would offer specials.
One source told Barbados TODAY that talks were ongoing in relation to the lowering of prices of frozen chicken.
“I can tell you that talks are still ongoing with regard to the lowering of prices. I don’t think anything was agreed on per se, but it has been a week since the temporary halt on importation of some products, so consumers should soon start to see some more specials,” the industry player said.
Meanwhile, Paul told Barbados TODAY he would continue to advocate for local products to be given preference and for steps to be taken to lower production cost so that consumers could get cheaper products.
He insisted that the level of attention being given to chicken wings by food vendors and retailers should also be given to other parts of the chicken.
“The reason they like the chicken wings so much is because they put a hefty mark up on them because they are brought in cheap . . . This is the challenge, there are so much up-sell on the chicken wings that they do not look at the other parts of the chicken which we have considerable amount of frozen up,” he added.
Paul said he was pleading with retailers to work more closely with agriculture producers and meat processors in trying to give specials to the consumers.
“I want to encourage them to work very closely with the local processors to see what type of specials can be given in respect to the frozen poultry meat and even frozen pork products. We understand this must only be temporary because at the end of the day in many cases, a lot of those farmers will be selling the products at a loss, but in order to avoid the pain of the cold storage charges they have to get rid of them,” he said.
Paul said it was difficult to say how soon things could return to some level of normalcy with the supply and demand for poultry products, adding that he would be seeking to do assessments on a weekly basis.
In relation to eggs, Paul said: “I think really that the producers are trying to be as flexible as possible in trying to get rid of those eggs.”
A check with several egg and poultry industry players suggested that chicken production had to be scaled back during the pandemic due to lower demand, while eggs continued to be sold at a reasonable pace with some offering specials over the last few weeks.
“Things are slow, but we are not dumping eggs,” said one egg producer in response to concern that some people were dumping eggs because of exceptionally low sales.
“There has been no general reduction in our prices, but we have had a few specials. That is not ongoing because it is the same money to produce the eggs,” he said.
Another industry operator, who would supply eggs to individuals and businesses, told Barbados TODAY she had enough eggs to satisfy the market and there was no need for reduction in price of that commodity.
“I know that we are pretty okay. From my production side, we scaled back on chickens as soon as we realised things were slow. So we were only running on two pens down from four. So we were fine there,” she said.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb
