By Charles Bourns, broiler grower, Gloucestershire
As I write this there is a great deal of talk about chicken sales being down by 5.6 % but I would argue that is not the true picture. Sales of British chicken are down by 17,000 tonnes in volume, and total poultry sales are down 51,000 tonnes in volume over 2021. But in 2022 volumes are still 58,000 tonnes up on 2020.
The export picture complicates things further. Our import balance with the EU is up 94,488 tonnes in the EU’s favour and I make this is equal to 22% of our market. There are reasons for this like Brexit, labour issues, covid and probably price. It also shows to my mind that the hidden hospitality and manufacturing industry are buying imported chicken. The above figures do not include imports from Brazil and Thailand. So in conclusion, chicken sales are up – just not British.
Maybe the fact that we have been distracted by the important issues of Avian Influenza (AI), our eyes have been taken off the prize of sales. We have been in this position before for other reasons and the industry went on the front foot and promoted its product. Surely we should be doing it again? We all grow to Red Tractor standards and we must pressure them to do more promotion, not just audit us more often as they are suggesting.
On AI we must somehow persuade the owners of multi-species units to go to single species units. The chicken industry used to have multi-aged sites; in fact the one I now run was one of these and had a problem with gangrenous dermatitis, something we have not seen for a while.
We had a meeting the other day and it seems that the retailers are up to their old tricks of playing one supplier off against another, cutting down on suppliers and going out to tender. They need to be careful as since January all my costs have gone up between 7% and 28% and this situation seems fairly universal. As a consequence of this, I am told that some producers are thinking of not placing chicks on their farms, which will produce a shortage of chicken on the shelves. Just maybe they will take notice of this warning and not allow the egg situation repeat itself, although having said that, the chicken industry is generally better at controlling supply and demand.
At home we are having our usual messy January and February crop. It is always our most expensive crop of the year with the worst performance. We have also started to do summer maintenance, buying new fans that take six weeks to arrive and other sundry items. We are also installing cameras as it is now part of Marks & Spencer’s requirements. Let’s hope this spring like weather continues.