Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::January 13, 2003

Worth repeating

Eric Joiner, president, COO and co-founder of AJC International, one of the largest food distribution services in the world, was the featured speaker at the 18th annual J.W. Fanning Lecture Dec. 11. In a talk entitled “Dynamics of the Global Poultry Market,” Joiner outlined major challenges the poultry industry faces today:
“The United States is such a white-meat market. That’s one of the reasons the U.S. [broiler poultry] market has such problems. . . . Large chicken breasts mean large leg quarters, which are not appealing to many of the Asian markets that have a demand for dark-meat chicken. The industry has to move over 6 billion large leg quarters this year. . . . The export market can’t take it.
“[Brazil] is blowing the doors off [poultry] production. They have an incredible ability to grow and harvest soybeans (a chief component in chicken feed). And their plants are first-class. Brazil’s exports grew by 38 percent in 2001. . . . If Brazil is limited at all, it is only in market access.”
After outlining the problems facing the poultry industry, Joiner suggested possible solutions, each of which involved bracing challenges:
“The United States could cut production, although that is very hard to do. We need to develop more dark-meat products for the domestic market. We need to push hard to open up new markets and aggressively fund the industry fight for market access. We need to take food safety issues seriously and find a way to compete with the Brazilian labor market.
“The picture isn’t pretty, but now you know what it looks like.”

--Cat Holmes

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