BELIZE CITY, Wed. Mar. 23, 2022– Belizeans will see an increase in the prices of poultry products in the upcoming days, says the Belize Poultry Association, which this week notified the public of a 9-cent price increase that will soon take effect.
Earlier this week, rumors of an increase in poultry prices ranging from 10 to 20 cents started to spread like wildfire. However, Armando Cowo, manager of the Belize Poultry Association, publicly addressed the matter and confirmed to the media that the price of poultry will be increasing by nine cents per pound.
Cowo told AMANDALA that the discussions about a possible price increase started to take place approximately 2 to 3 weeks ago, and was triggered by the global surge in fuel prices to near crisis levels, which has driven up the cost of production within the poultry industry.
Cowo explained, “We started discussion more than 2 weeks, 3 weeks [ago], and looking at the developing situation in the economy and how [they] impact the overall world economy was having on the local economy. You have to bear in mind, our industry sits in the middle between certain producers and consumers, and we have to buy corn and soybean to feed to convert into poultry products to pass on to the consumer for consumption. The price of fuel is one factor and the price of fuel by-products is another factor.”
“You can say everything boils down to oil. Our industry consumes a lot of plastics. There’s no other medium to [sell] meat other than plastic. If you notice the chicken that comes in trays [is] covered by plastics as well. As we all know, plastic is a victim of [their] own success and that’s the reason why environmentalists start taking measures against plastic. We can’t do away with it, [and] how the saying goes? You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it, and as a consequence of that, the prices going up on all these petroleum by-products has an impact on the industry. Plus the other scenarios with other energy because our industry is energy-intensive,” he further explained.
He went on to say, “I guess some people may not realize it, but from the get-go, we start consuming energy. From the farmers, starting to plow the land preparing the soil, land, the greens that we will consume energy is going. Harvesting is energy. Taking it to the mills, the mills will use energy to convert it into feed, and that feed needs to move from the mill to the barns, and the barns themselves need to consume energy, because we’re running those barns on industrial fans to keep a certain temperature for the chickens to grow properly. And then, when they leave the barn, again, it’s another transportation to the slaughtering facility, and the slaughtering facility, itself, is a huge consumer of energy. We have to have those birds chilled within seconds; we don’t take hours outside before we chill them. It’s straight from slaughter into the giant cold houses, and it [consumes] a lot of energy.”
Cowo calls the price increase an adjustment, and he predicts that prices may be adjusted downward when global conditions stabilize.
“We can’t bear it anymore. We need to move now and raise, [well] I wouldn’t say raise, [and] it’s a rise in price. It’s more like an adjustment to adjust to the economy. I wouldn’t like to use the term ‘raise,’ because when you say ‘raise’, it’s like it doesn’t go back down. We are hoping sometime in the future when things go back to where they were, if they do go back, we can readjust downward. We are not here to gouge the consumers. We’re here to support them the same way they supported our industry,” he said.
Cowo highlighted the possibility of price-gouging by some vendors throughout the country who may use the increased price of poultry as an excuse to further elevate the prices of their products beyond what is necessary.
“We know that there are people out there who will take advantage of the situation. Let’s look at this scenario: if you were to raise the price per pound for chicken by ten cents, and you go to the store and you buy a four-pound chicken; in theory, you should pay forty cents more, because for that store, nothing has changed; we’re still delivering to the store, it’s not like they’re going to pick it up themselves. We deliver it to them. And therefore, any cost difference for them is not there. You will see that some stores might take the price far more than what we are doing. You might say, ‘well, I might raise it up [to] forty cents per pound, I will [be selling] it for a dollar more for the chicken. And to use the industry as an excuse to raise their prices, and that’s what we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see the consumer being affected by people who would take advantage of the situation and take more money out of the consumer’s pocket,” Cowo said.
He urged vendors not to exploit the situation by raising their prices unreasonably.
“We’re simply trying to adjust the price, and if you need to adjust your price, adjust it accordingly and don’t tax the consumer. Everyone is going through hard times, [in] all industries, nothing is easy for anyone right now. We all know the reasons why, and there’s nothing that we can do about it,” Cowo said.