Pres­i­dent of the T&T Pluck Shop As­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to clamp down on "wan­ton care­less im­por­ta­tion of for­eign chick­en."

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Rasheed Karim said the reck­less im­por­ta­tion of whole chick­ens and leg/thigh parts was de­stroy­ing the lo­cal poul­try in­dus­try.

Say­ing the in­dus­try em­ployed 10,000 work­ers di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, he said the in­dus­try would flop if Gov­ern­ment did not in­ter­vene. He said the present prices of live boil­ers could not cope with the im­port­ed chick­en price.

He said: "Our lo­cal chick­en is $6 a pound whole­sale and the for­eign chick­ens are be­ing dumped here at a price that is now sell­ing close to $6 re­tail and this clear­ly shows that the lo­cal mar­ket can­not com­pete with the for­eign mar­ket."

He al­so com­plained that there was al­so a prob­lem with im­prop­er ha­lal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the for­eign com­pa­nies.

He called on pluck shop op­er­a­tors to reg­is­ter with the new gov­ern­men­tal po­lices and guide­lines for a more en­vi­ron­men­tal and health friend­ly in­dus­try.