March 15, 2005

Caribbean poultry industry to get help from Canada

The Canadian government is providing CAN$363 000 in financial assistance to the Caribbean poultry industry to help Caribbean producers become more competitive in the international market.

The funds are being funnelled through the St Lucia-based Caribbean Regional Programme for Economic Competitiveness (CPEC) to the Caribbean Poultry Association (CPA), and with the purpose to develop the best practices for the table egg and broiler industry throughout the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region so as to allow it to achieve international standards.

"For us, achieving international competitiveness is quite a task because largely, we in CARICOM remain small producers," said the executive director of the CPA, Robert Best.

He added that there have been positive developments, as leading producers in Jamaica and Barbados have production efficiency figures which compare favourably with those of top producers in North and Central America, most notable in non scale dependent areas like mortality, hatchability, and processing plant yield.

The CPA official said that one of the main attractions of poultry production in the Caribbean is that local consumers were utilising on average 40 kilograms of chicken per person per capita, which puts the region among the top consumers in the world.

"Our industry is able to produce 65 percent of our intake of poultry needs.

For table eggs our intake is 20 to 30 percent of what is recorded in the highest-consuming countries in the world such as Mexico, China and France, and we see that as an opportunity to expand our production," he added.

He said CARICOM states are already producing over 60 percent and over 90 percent of their egg consumption.