Yes­ter­day’s clo­sure of food out­lets and restau­rants fol­low­ing the tight­en­ing of COVID-19 mea­sures by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, can re­sult in the coun­try’s poul­try in­dus­try los­ing $25 mil­lion in chick­en sales over the next four weeks.

The un­ex­pect­ed move by Row­ley to shut down food es­tab­lish­ments un­til April 30 as part of the Stay-at-Home mea­sures now has chick­en proces­sors, farm­ers and T&T Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Robin Phillips run­ning around like head­less chick­ens to lo­cate pri­vate cold stor­age fa­cil­i­ties to store ap­prox­i­mate­ly one mil­lion processed chick­ens that are ex­pect­ed to flood the mar­ket by month-end.

Phillips ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment caught them off guard and he was un­sure when fast food out­lets like KFC, Roy­al Cas­tle, Japs Fried Chick­en and Church’s Chick­en—their largest pur­chasers—would re­sume busi­ness with no idea of when the COVID-19 mea­sures would end.

Every week, he said, mem­bers pro­duce and sell 800,000 broil­ers. One-third of the 800,000 birds (250,000) go to the food­ser­vice sec­tor, main­ly restau­rants and food out­lets. The re­main­ing birds are bought by su­per­mar­kets and pluck shops.

“As of now, we have no mar­ket for 250,000 broil­ers fol­low­ing the clo­sure of these food es­tab­lish­ments,” Phillips said.

For this month, he said the poul­try in­dus­try will now have no buy­ers for one mil­lion chick­ens that will be avail­able. Col­lec­tive­ly, Phillips said the weight of these chick­ens was four mil­lion pounds val­ued at $25 mil­lion.

Phillips said the as­so­ci­a­tion lacked cold stor­age fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date the vol­ume of chick­ens they will be sad­dled with.

“We were to­tal­ly caught off guard...we were not ex­pect­ing this at all. When the lock­down be­gan there was a list of es­sen­tial ser­vices, of which the food­ser­vice sec­tor was part of. We are not sure if the pluck shops will be im­pact­ed on the ex­tend­ed stay home reg­u­la­tion, so we are wait­ing clar­i­ty on that.”

Phillips said stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try are now in a quandary know­ing that each week farm­ers will pro­duce 250,000 chick­ens with no buy­ers avail­able.

“We don’t know where we will sell these chick­ens. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we can’t keep them on the farms. No one knows when the mar­ket will re­turn to nor­mal­cy or when will the food­ser­vice sec­tor be re­opened,” he said.

Phillips said they will try to store what they can for now but said each proces­sor has lim­it­ed cold stor­age.

“At least 90 per cent of the chick­ens we sell in the coun­try is con­sumed with­in one week of it com­ing in­to the pro­cess­ing plants. We don’t have long term cold stor­age be­cause the con­sumer prefers fresh chick­ens.”

Phillips said sell­ing the chick­ens at re­duced prices to food es­tab­lish­ments was al­so not an op­tion, as they too had in­ad­e­quate stor­age and were not op­er­at­ing their busi­ness­es.

He said some chick­en proces­sors have con­tact­ed a few in­de­pen­dent cold stor­age op­er­a­tors with the hope of stor­ing the chick­ens at a fee they will have to ab­sorb. Phillips added that shelf life of a frozen chick­en is 180 days from the date of slaugh­ter.

He said the first COVID blow came when air­line cater­ers stopped pur­chas­ing chick­ens with the ground­ing of flights. Roti shops soon al­so re­duced their or­ders.

“So it is just adding to the prob­lem. KFC and Roy­al Cas­tle are the ones that stand out. So the whole food­ser­vice sec­tor is shut down.”

Phillips said one so­lu­tion was for Gov­ern­ment to tem­porar­i­ly halt the im­por­ta­tion of chick­en.

“We are not sure if the Gov­ern­ment will be in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing some of the chick­ens off our hands to feed the army and pa­tients at the hos­pi­tals. We are will­ing to ac­cept a de­ferred pay­ment arrange­ment,” Phillips said.

In a What­sapp mes­sage re­sponse yes­ter­day, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat told Guardian Me­dia he has been speak­ing to poul­try in­dus­try stake­hold­ers through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I have dealt with some is­sues fac­ing duck meat pro­duc­ers and we are good for now,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said added, “Ex­cess poul­try is in­evitable be­cause of the loss of the fried chick­en busi­ness for now. I ex­pect that su­per­mar­kets, to the ex­tent they have stor­age, would ab­sorb some of the sup­ply and the proces­sors can them­selves process and hold chick­ens as a buffer for use by the su­per­mar­ket trade.”

He said the is­sue of im­ports raised by the as­so­ci­a­tion would have to be ad­dressed.

“We can­not close the door to im­ports but I can do what I can,” he said.

In terms of the state buy­ing some of the chick­ens, Ramb­harat said that was an op­tion they can ex­plore. He said Namde­v­co was al­so ex­am­in­ing ex­cess stor­age ca­pac­i­ty with­in the pri­vate sec­tor for poul­try and veg­eta­bles as “part of a strat­e­gy to cre­ate a buffer stock.”