A PAPER is to go before Cabinet today from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Commerce, to address the issue of controlled prices on whole chicken.

But chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society, James Paul, stated yesterday it was a situation which needed to be addressed for some time.

He was speaking to members of the Press during a break of the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) Accountability Seminar at the Savannah Hotel, Hastings, Christ Church.

Last Sunday shoppers had to pay 15 per cent more across the board at both the wholesale and retail ends.

At the time, president of the Egg and Poultry Producers Association, Wendell Clarke, told the SUNDAY SUN chicken farmers were losing money daily because of the 32 per cent increase in feed from Pinnacle and that they could no longer continue to wait on Government officials from the Ministries
of Agriculture and Trade to intervene.

Losing too much

He said farmers were losing too much money and would have "to take the bull by the horn
and do what we have to do".

Yesterday Paul said those farmers were not geared to supply chicken parts like others and "therefore you are putting a lot of farmers at a disadvantage".

"So we are hoping that after three or four weeks now, that the ministry will move quickly and address the situation and relax the control price," he said.

Paul said the evidence was there, with the 25 per cent increased cost in feed, 95 per cent increase in the cost of diesel and the expected increased cost of electricity.

"The costs have gone up generally in the industry. Over the last 15 years prices have only gone up 15 per cent. It is not unreasonable then for us to ask the Government to move more quickly to address the concerns
of the poultry growers," he added.

He said another concern would be the pressure forcing farmers out of the industry, "because it is very difficult for them to get back into it".

"I don't think we should fool ourselves of the plight. It is a situation which needs to be addressed since yesterday," he charged.

Relief soon

However, Minister of Agriculture Haynesley Benn said poultry farmers would soon see relief, with the Cabinet paper being discussed today.

"They definitely will have something to look forward to. They were concerned about the speed at which things would happen but [it] is a controlled item . . . .

"They pointed in the direction of the pork producers who had made the announcement, but pork prices are not controlled . . . and the unfortunate thing is that the price of the raw materials that go into the feed continues to increase beyond our control," Benn said.

* tracymoore@nationnews.com