Chicken farmers gathered in Ottawa last week to bask in the glow of a good year just completed, but were also warned of clouds on the horizon.
Growth of 1.2 percent in 2010 reflected consumer demand and confidence, executive director Mike Dungate told Chicken Farmers of Canada’s March 22 annual meeting.
The industry remained profitable despite rising input costs, and the system enjoyed political and organizational stability last year.
“We’ve got a good base for chicken as the meat of the future,” he said.
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Chair David Fuller, elected for the 13th consecutive year, reinforced the message.
He said the industry remains the supplier of Canada’s favourite meat with more than one billion kilograms of production. While producer prices fell slightly, so did production costs.
And tighter control of chicken import permits meant imports were 7.5 percent of the domestic market for the first time in years, which is the desired level.
However, Fuller also warned that the industry must deal with consumer concerns about antibiotic use in the industry and whether that leads to creation of resistant bacteria.
“We’re between a rock and a hard place,” said the Nova Scotia producer.
There is a persistent belief that a connection exists between industry use to keep healthy flocks healthy and threats to human health.
“We can’t say there’s not,” he said. “We just don’t know.”
So while research continues to find the answer to that question, the industry must also reduce use of antimicrobials that also are used in human medicine.
The industry has been funding research into more effective Class 4 drugs that are not related to antibiotics used for humans.
“We need to know definitively if we are contributing to the problem and meanwhile reduce our use,” he said.
“We must, we must maintain consumer confidence.”
He said producers must improve practices with safer drugs and educate the public about what is being done.
“We must get ourselves out of the equation.”
Fuller said in a later interview that he can imagine the day when the only on-farm use will be Class 4 antibiotics.
“I see no reason why we can’t get to that point down the road, but until then, the strategy has to be to reduce use of Class 1 and 2 as much as possible and let consumers know what we are doing.”
He also said chicken should not contribute to growing consumer concern about rising food prices because chicken prices fluctuate up or down depending on input costs.
However, he said that while retail and food service companies increase their shelf prices when farmgate prices rise, they don’t always lower the consumer price when farmer prices fall.
“They say that the question is that consumers don’t want to see price fluctuation but stability,” he said.
“Whether the stability has to be at the high end of the price cycle set when our prices increase and not reflect when they decrease is something you have to ask the companies.”
