Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

The sto­ry broke a few weeks ago that im­port­ed frozen chick­en leg quar­ters com­ing in­to the coun­try from the US were reach­ing here over 180 days old and ap­par­ent­ly un­fit for hu­man con­sump­tion.

This news cre­at­ed a pan­ic among con­sumers caus­ing an ad­verse ef­fect on some su­per­mar­kets as cus­tomers be­gan re­turn­ing frozen chick­en al­ready bought, wor­ried about food fraud and the risk of un­safe con­sump­tion.

Dis­cus­sions about be­com­ing veg­e­tar­i­ans even ap­peared on the so­cial me­dia net­work Face­book, where peo­ple ex­changed opin­ions on the is­sue. Fur­ther anx­i­ety was cre­at­ed when at a June 17 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing on food fraud, Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (PATT) pres­i­dent Robin Phillips and Caribbean Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion (CPA) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Desmond Ali, said chick­en past 180 days old and con­sid­ered un­fit for hu­man con­sump­tion and mar­ket­ed as pet meat, was be­ing pur­chased by lo­cal re­tail­ers and sold to con­sumers.

But this was im­me­di­ate­ly dis­missed by Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Dr Yunus Ibrahim. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ibrahim said it must be made clear that freez­ing meat as part of the preser­va­tion process to be able to keep the meat for the pur­pose of fu­ture sale is a nor­mal stan­dard.

He said all the talk about ex­pired meat be­ing sold was far from true. And he said the 180 days that's be­ing clout­ed around at the mo­ment was a US poul­try stan­dard which states that frozen meat af­ter 180 days should be deemed as pet meat. There is no ex­ist­ing stan­dard in T&T.

Ibrahim said what peo­ple must un­der­stand is the on­ly way to get meat from point A to point B was to freeze it.

"It is not to say that the chick­en is stale. It is not as if we are tak­ing rot­ten meat in the US...freez­ing rot­ten ex­pired meat and then send­ing it to T&T, that is so not the case, and we have to get that jar­gon cor­rect," said Ibrahim.

"No­body is sell­ing ex­pired meat!" he quipped.

He said all meats com­ing in­to T&T comes frozen. And they are placed to freeze im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they are slaugh­tered.

"This is the on­ly way they are ever go­ing to reach our shores."

He be­lieves the peo­ple who want to see a high­er stan­dard for im­port­ed chick­en to be de­vel­oped, are be­ing mis­chie­vous by prop­a­gat­ing that ex­pired meat is be­ing sold at gro­ceries.

"The re­al­i­ty is, we in T&T do not have our clear cut in­for­ma­tion right with re­spect to our po­si­tion on frozen meat com­ing in­to our coun­try as it ap­plies to chick­en. We don't have an ex­ist­ing stan­dard and we are hear­ing that a stan­dard had been draft­ed by the Min­istry of Health since 2012 and it is yet to be vet­ted and ap­proved by the said min­istry. Un­til this stan­dard is im­ple­ment­ed, which is a process, no one should be walk­ing around spread­ing un­truths or non-fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion about im­port­ed frozen meats."

He said the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion en­sures all health and safe­ty stan­dards are in­tact.

He be­lieves, though, there may be one or two un­scrupu­lous peo­ple who may be this de­cep­tive, but the As­so­ci­a­tion's po­si­tion is that if meat is marked as pet meat, it should have nev­er en­tered the mar­ket for sale as any­thing else. He said that was strict­ly an is­sue for the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to en­sure.

Ibrahim rea­soned it is not in the best in­ter­est of any su­per­mar­ket to sell goods that would be re­turned to them. He said with­out a stan­dard from the Min­istry of Health, the ques­tion aris­es of who is lead­ing who.

He said less than 20 per cent of chick­en sold at the su­per­mar­kets is for­eign. He said mis­chief-mak­ers are mak­ing a play for full lo­cal sup­ply by turn­ing con­sumers away from im­port­ed chick­en. He said so far the rea­sons be­ing giv­en by those mis­chief-mak­ers were with­out sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis or facts. There­fore it on­ly shows that they are the ones who stand to ben­e­fit from the pro­pa­gan­da that's be­ing spread, he said.

Prob­lems of lo­cal chick­en farm­ing

The T&T Guardian want­ed to know if this coun­try can re­al­ly go ful­ly lo­cal in sup­ply­ing chick­en. To get our an­swer we spent a day in south Trinidad, vis­it­ing poul­try farms and speak­ing with two ex­pe­ri­enced poul­try farm­ers who gave in­sights in­to the chal­lenges and in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems that make rear­ing chick­ens a labour of load rather than a labour of love.

Both farm­ers rear chick­ens for a ma­jor chick­en sup­pli­er, and re­quest­ed anonymi­ty for fear of be­ing vic­timised. They told the T&T Guardian it was not even prof­itable to rear chick­ens. Ac­cord­ing to them, they rear chick­ens at a measly prof­it of $2 per chick­en and some­times they were even fought on this. Both, though lovers of the farm, had to seek oth­er small busi­ness ven­tures to feed their fam­i­lies.

Carl has been rear­ing chick­ens since 1991, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of his fa­ther who was al­so a poul­try farmer. But the worn out look­ing rear­ing shed which hous­es 15,000 chick­ens is ev­i­dence of chal­lenges. He says the cap­i­tal in­vest­ment way sur­pass­es the rev­enue made. He must en­sure the rear­ing shed is equipped with prop­er equip­ment, wa­ter sup­ply, fans, sprin­klers and sprayed reg­u­lar­ly to pre­vent in­sects and bac­te­ria, among oth­er ne­ces­si­ties. Carl has his job well cut out for him.

Chicks reach Carl's farm at a day old, and are fed starter feed. They re­ceive five dif­fer­ent vac­ci­na­tions. This is fol­lowed by two more vac­cines with­in the next 20 days. By six to eight weeks, if all goes well, they are ready to be sold back at a con­tract­ed price.

Carl de­scribes it as two months of hard work. "Re­mem­ber we are grow­ing these chick­ens from new­born to the point of sale."

A day's work in­cludes feed­ing the birds in the morn­ing, med­icat­ing the wa­ter, and clean­ing the shed, which in­cludes spray­ing. He has to en­sure that rats, man­i­cou, owls, cats, stray dogs and even cor­beaux stay out of the shed (this isn't al­ways achiev­able). Some­times 100 chick­ens can be lost all at once when at­tacked, and that's a loss for a farmer be­cause he has to pay for that loss.

With his aged shed, there is plen­ty main­te­nance to be done. He said it is dif­fi­cult to keep a steady main­te­nance of the farm be­cause so lit­tle mon­ey is made.

Oth­er chal­lenges in­clude labour, as sourc­ing work­ers is dif­fi­cult as Carl said no one wants to do that kind of work. Added to that he said even if work­ers were eas­i­ly found, farm­ers can­not even pay them. He said:

"If you do the math on it, a farmer will be work­ing for $150 a day. How you go­ing to pay a work­er, main­tain your farm? It boils down to where you have to do the work your­self to get val­ue for your mon­ey."

He said for the last five years it has been very hard for farm­ers, be­cause they have been work­ing and just mak­ing $1.50 or $2. He re­it­er­at­ed poul­try farm­ers lose more than they gain.

His col­league Vic­tor added that when these con­cerns are raised in meet­ings with sup­pli­ers, of­ten the farm­ers are vic­timised.

"I went to the last set of meet­ings and af­ter that, I nev­er get a good batch of chick­en again," said Vic­tor.

Once the chick­en is grown, the con­ver­sion is made by weight. He de­scribed that a "bad batch" of chick­ens will not grow or feed well be­cause med­ica­tion might be pur­pose­ly left out. The birds will not die but they will not grow well, which then leaves the farmer at a dis­ad­van­tage.

Both farm­ers said their as­so­ci­at­ed broil­er se­lects farm­ers they want to help by choos­ing to whom they give good or bad chick­en batch­es. They said there is a lot of "back stab­bing" and pol­i­tics in­volved in the poul­try farm­ing in­dus­try. And the dis­uni­ty, they said, is dis­tort­ing the re­al need for bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture, so that poul­try farm­ers can make a bet­ter liv­ing.

As pri­vate farm­ers, they said there is not much de­mand they can make of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture or the Gov­ern­ment to seek their in­ter­est. But they are hop­ing some­one picks up their plight so that poli­cies can be draft­ed and im­ple­ment­ed to as­sist poul­try farm­ers. As it is, if con­di­tions re­main the same, both Carl and Vic­tor be­lieve there will be a se­ri­ous de­cline in the ex­is­tence of pri­vate poul­try farm­ing.

When con­tact­ed via tele­phone and email to speak on these con­cerns, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture's com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit said the T&T Guardian's ques­tions have been for­ward­ed to the rel­e­vant min­istry per­son­nel for their at­ten­tion. There has since been no re­sponse.

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Need for food poli­cies and stan­dards

Com­ment­ing on the re­cent chick­en fi­as­co, Agri­cul­tur­al Econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj de­fined some terms. He said food safe­ty refers to mea­sures tak­en to pro­tect the na­tion's food sup­ply from un­in­ten­tion­al adul­ter­ation or con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Food de­fence is the col­lec­tive term used to de­scribe ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with pro­tect­ing the na­tion's food sup­ply from de­lib­er­ate or in­ten­tion­al acts of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion or tam­per­ing. And food fraud is an in­ten­tion­al act that is eco­nom­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

"Giv­en these ba­sic de­f­i­n­i­tions, one is very con­strained to iden­ti­fy pub­lic pol­i­cy and in­sti­tu­tions that pro­tect the in­ter­est of con­sumers," he said, point­ing to the ur­gent need to set clear poli­cies to guide T&T food se­cu­ri­ty and nu­tri­tion stan­dards.

Ja­son Fran­cis of Bloom Im­ports in Diego Mar­tin, who im­ports or­gan­ic poul­try, said the qual­i­ty of lo­cal­ly grown chick­ens de­pends on a num­ber of fac­tors. Breed of bird, di­et, liv­ing con­di­tions, age of the bird, har­vest process and han­dling af­ter har­vest re­al­ly play crit­i­cal roles, he said.

"If you are cram­ming chick­ens in­to a small pen with lit­tle ven­ti­la­tion, the qual­i­ty of the life and there­fore the meat from that an­i­mal is go­ing to suf­fer. Plus, with a lot of chick­ens in a small space, they get sick, so most com­mer­cial farms need to give them med­i­cine to sur­vive. With yard fowls, com­mon prob­lems are the breed and the age of the bird. Dif­fer­ent breeds will pro­duce dif­fer­ent body types and meat. If a chick­en is old­er, the meat will taste dif­fer­ent, and so on."

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Can we grow lo­cal or­gan­ic chick­en?

Speak­ing about grow­ing or­gan­ic or hor­mone-free chick­ens, Agri­cul­tur­al Econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said to­tal­ly or­gan­ic chick­ens might be rel­a­tive­ly dif­fi­cult to ob­tain com­mer­cial­ly in T&T but they should nev­er be ruled out as a po­ten­tial mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Ja­son Fran­cis of Bloom Im­ports in Diego Mar­tin im­ports or­gan­ic chick­en. He said lo­cal­ly reared or­gan­ic chick­en is very dif­fi­cult or even im­pos­si­ble to grow. He said if some­one claims to be sell­ing you "or­gan­ic chick­en" that isn't im­port­ed, they are most like­ly wrong. He said:

"We see it a lot with ven­dors try­ing to sell us 'or­gan­ic' prod­ucts. First off, all com­mer­cial­ly milled feed in Trinidad con­tains 'vi­t­a­min' packs that use an­tibi­otics. So, even if some­one has 'yard fowl', if they are giv­ing them feed from the store, it's not or­gan­ic. If the yard is sprayed, it's not or­gan­ic. If the fruits/veg­gies they are eat­ing aren't or­gan­ic, the chick­en isn't or­gan­ic. If they are feed­ing corn and the corn is ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied maize (GMO) corn, it's not or­gan­ic. Just be­cause some­one has yard fowl or isn't giv­ing their chick­en hor­mones, doesn't mean it's 'or­gan­ic'. It's a long list.

"We im­port and sell a 100 per cent or­gan­ic chick­en from the US; how­ev­er, it's fair­ly ex­pen­sive, main­ly due to cost of the prod­uct out of the US and the 61 per cent du­ty we have to pay here in Trinidad. San­ta Fe Farms chick­en gets close...The ma­jor dif­fer­ence is that the corn be­ing used is not guar­an­teed non-GMO, which would be re­quired to la­bel it 'full US­DA or­gan­ic,'" he said.

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Is grow­ing your own

chick­en re­al­ly vi­able?

Agri­cul­tur­al Econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said many con­ver­sa­tions on home gar­den­ing of­ten ig­nore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of meat or fish pro­duc­tion at a sub­sis­tence lev­el, ex­cept per­haps for the tilapia push.

"Cer­tain­ly, we are in a time which de­mands that peo­ple see a re­turn to the land and self-suf­fi­cien­cy, which al­lows a fo­cus on per­son­al health and sav­ings," he said.

He said giv­en ur­ban and sub­ur­ban liv­ing arrange­ments, it may be rel­a­tive­ly dif­fi­cult to com­fort­ably raise chick­ens, but if you save on the bud­get by grow­ing more food plants, then it al­lows more flex­i­bil­i­ty and ra­tio­nal­i­ty about what can and should be pur­chased.

Ma­haraj said the coun­try needs to in­cen­tivise and in­form the mar­ket con­cen­tra­tion, and needs to build ca­pac­i­ty for en­try or ex­pan­sion in chick­en farm­ing.

"The ca­pac­i­ty of the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor to pro­duce has been al­lowed to dwin­dle," he com­ment­ed, "while the im­per­a­tive to pro­duce is struck with the ebb and flow of the econ­o­my and ran­dom ex­pos­es sim­i­lar to the 2013 horse meat scan­dal in Eu­rope."