Yvonne Webb

The price of chick­en has been slashed by 50 per cent, from $5 to $2.49 a pound, says pres­i­dent of the T&T Pluck Shop As­so­ci­a­tion, Imam Rasheed Karim. How­ev­er, while con­sumers stand to ben­e­fit in the short term, Karim said the jobs of up to 6000 work­ers in the in­dus­try are in jeop­ardy be­cause of un­fair trade prac­tices. He is call­ing on the min­is­ters of agri­cul­ture as well as trade and in­dus­try, to step in and save jobs in the poul­try in­dus­try.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia at Cou­va where he filed nom­i­na­tion to con­test a post in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in­ter­nal elec­tions on Mon­day, Karim said: "the ben­e­fit to con­sumer is pos­i­tive, they will pay cheap­er prices and get max­i­mum meat for their dol­lar, but the broad­er as­pect of what we are see­ing is a demise of the poul­try in­dus­try in gen­er­al." The Imam said farm­ers were pro­duc­ing chick­en at a cost of five dol­lars a pound and now ex­pect­ed to sell it at 50 per cent less. Re­fer­ring to an ad­ver­tise­ment from a chick­en com­pa­ny that broil­ers were be­ing sold at $2.49 a pound, Karim said it was high­ly im­pos­si­ble that this was the fi­nal price con­sumers would pay.

"There are ad­di­tion­al costs, in­clud­ing trans­port and we think that a rea­son­able price at pluck shops is chick­en at $2.99 a pound." He said the high pro­duc­tion cost cou­pled with the com­pe­ti­tion from for­eign im­ports of chick­en parts could soon shut down the in­dus­try. "What is hap­pen­ing is that gov­ern­ment has al­lowed the free im­por­ta­tion of chick­en in­to this coun­try and some un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­men are bring­ing in leg and thighs, which is not a big sell­er from the Unit­ed States, at cheap prices.

"We spoke to the min­is­ter about three months ago con­cern­ing the im­por­ta­tion of chick­en. "We told him su­per­mar­kets and the chains of fast food out­lets were im­port­ing leg and thighs at ridicu­lous cost prices and they are com­pet­ing un­fair­ly right now with the lo­cal in­dus­try. "We are say­ing in a short time from now there would be no poul­try in­dus­try if gov­ern­ment does not step in and do some­thing," Karim said.