March 20, 2017

South Korea has taken a beating from its worst bird flu outbreak so that it plans to lift chicken import tariffs next month to prevent further price increases.

A ban on US poultry imports following confirmation of an H7 bird flu outbreak in Tennessee state has also led South Korean producers to seek to further raise chicken prices. Even before the ban, prices had already been hiked after South Korea culled 35 million birds, or one-fifth of all domestic poultry, due to local avian influenza outbreaks, the news site just-food.com reported.

"Tariffs applied to imported chicken (18-22.6%) will be temporarily applied at 0% from early April in consultation with the related departments….to promptly stabilise the market prices by promoting domestic imports of cheaper imported chicken", the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs was quoted as saying in a statement.

"If [0%] tariffs are applied, the import prices of Brazilian chicken meat will be significantly lowered, and imports from private importers are expected to increase", the ministry of explained.

As part of the price-stabilisation effort, the agriculture ministry said it would also release 2,000 tonnes of government chicken inventory from Tuesday, March 21, at below-market prices.

As of March 10, since the country's import ban of US poultry on March 6, the average chicken retail price per kilogramme rose 5.7% to 5,713 won (US$5.06) Reuters reported, citing figures from the state-run Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp.-Rick Alberto