Chicken meat may cross beef price as feed crisis sees no end

As the price of chicken meat touched Rs650 per kilogramme on Tuesday, traders and poultry farmers warned that relative affordability of chicken may become a thing of the past, and soon it could become as pricey as beef in light of the feed crisis. They added the price could cross Rs800 per kg, almost equivalent to the red meat, as the live broiler chicken was being sold up to Rs370/kg in Islamabad. On the other hand, the Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) and All-Pakistan Solvent Extractors’ Association (APSEA) have threatened to protest in the Punjab capital on Thursday (tomorrow) if the government did not respond to their SOS call and save the two industries from collapse. There has been a sharp spike in the prices of poultry products since October 2022 after the customs authorities stopped the release of GMO soybean shipments arriving mainly from the US and Brazil.