June 21, 2010

USDA buys dark meat chicken to ease market surplus

The USDA will buy up to US$14 million of dark chicken meat for federal food nutrition assistance, in a bid to help producers who face rising cold storage inventories and a decreasing wholesale price, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

The chicken meat procured will be used in food banks and other federal food nutrition assistance programmes, he added.

The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service buys a variety of food products each year to support a number of federal nutrition programmes and to distribute to natural disaster victims.

The National Chicken Council said the timely purchase will reduce excess product inventory and provide food to needy people in the US, while citing a prolonged trade dispute with Russia.

Normally, US chicken producers sell more than 1.5 billion pounds of chicken legs to Russia each year. But the country banned US chicken imports in January because many American plants use a chlorine wash to process chickens.