More than 100 poultry producers staged a protest in Cavan town today (Tuesday, December 21) outside some of the town’s main retailers.
Members of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) Poultry Committee and producers demonstrated outside Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Dunnes and SuperValu in an effort to recover costs and secure the survival of the sector.
IFA Poultry Committee chairman Andy Boylan said: “Poultry growers are caught in a classic cost-price squeeze that has to be addressed urgently. Retailers cannot rely on producers to keep going in this situation.”
Costs for poultry sector
The IFA said that family farms that produce Bord Bia Quality Assured chicken and eggs have seen their costs of production increase at an unprecedented rate in the past year.
“The cost of gas, energy, labour and animal feed have all seen inflation not witnessed by the sector in half a generation. Irish inflation shot to a 14-year high in October, which has had a damaging effect on the sector,” Boylan added.
Vice chairman of the Poultry Committee, Brendan Soden said farmers are very concerned about their future.
“The EU average price for eggs has increased by 13.2%. However, Ireland is one of only two member states where the price has decreased by 8.4% in the past 12 months, while feed costs are up 36% on last year. This is simply unsustainable,” he explained.
Boylan added that growers are suffering and losing money: “Without an immediate increase in the wholesale retail price, to be passed back to egg and chicken producers, the entire sector is in jeopardy.
“We produce top quality, Bord Bia QA produce, at prices which are not sustainable. We [want] to highlight the absolute necessity for our costs to be recovered from the food chain immediately,” he concluded.
The group said that the Irish poultry sector supports 6,000 jobs which could be in jeopardy if costs are not recovered.