Tight supplies and high prices for beef and pork in Canada stimulate growth in chicken demand

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

A tight beef and pork supply coupled with higher prices for those two meats is helping to increase the demand for chicken.

Chicken Farmers of Canada is reporting in its Nov. 10 issue of Chicken Fax that as of Sept. 30 there was 935.5 million kilograms of fresh chicken for the Canadian market, which is 11.6 million kg more than in 2013.

The national organization also reports production up to Sept. 30 is 800.7 million kilograms, or 1.8 per cent (14.4 million kilograms) higher than in 2013. Imports are down by two per cent (2.8 million kilograms) compared to last year at the same time.

Jan Rus, Chicken Farmers manager of market information and systems, says by email production is up because the Chicken Farmers board increased national allocations in 2014 after consulting with its “downstream partners. Chicken demand seems to be up for the year-to-date by about 3.5 per cent.” Rus was referring to Nielsen retail sales data.

Imports are lower than last year but “are expected to increase to normal levels by year end,” he says.

Frozen chicken inventories on Oct. 1 were 30.6 million kilograms, which is 0.50 million kilograms lower than the previous month and 5.2 million kilograms lower than they were on Oct. 1, 2013.

Producer prices for quota period A-127 (Nov. 2 to Dec. 30) are up 2.6 cents compared to the previous quota period A-126 (Sept. 7 to Nov. 1). On average Canadian live prices in A-127 are 0.38 cents higher than they were for the same weeks in the previous year. The Ontario live price for A-127 is $1.626 a kilogram. BF