No chicken shortage this season – Poultry Association

Guyanese can expect a full stock of poultry this season as the Guyana Poultry Producers Association has assured that there will be no shortage.

President of the Association Patrick DeGroot told the News Room that “enough hatching eggs” have been procured to supply the holiday season.

DeGroot explained too that on average, one million pounds of chicken are used every week in the country and that number increases by 20 per cent at Christmas.

“…by all indications, enough hatching eggs were imported to produce sufficient chicken for Christmas, so we will not have any shortages and we can guarantee that,” he related.

DeGroot noted, however, that the pandemic did put a damper on the industry with a 60 per cent reduction in the demand.

“Because of the lockdown…all of the fast-food businesses had to close earlier, we had a serious cut down in sales and we had to store all that chicken so production was cut by over 40 per cent,” he explained.

But now that things have returned to some sense of normalcy, DeGroot stated that adjustments were made to facilitate the rise in the supply of broiler meat.

“.so we are back to 100 per cent production now, the industry is not affected by COVID-19 anymore so we are set for Christmas.”