03/20/08 Pecking Order

Which came first, the chicken or the corn? The new twist on the old riddle certainly has a lot of us scratching our heads. In a can't win for losing situation the U.S. chicken industry is facing a crisis from soaring feed ingredient costs resulting from corn based ethanol production. But yet the nation needs and wants fuel alternatives. The corn side claims that there is more than enough corn available to be able to both feed the nations livestock and people and produce Ethanol, an alternative to carbon based fuel, the chicken side blames their struggling and rising feed and production costs on U.S. federal government subsidies to corn based ethanol blenders. In a recent report by Pilgrims Pride, the largest chicken processor in the U.S., their company's total costs for corn and soybean meal to feed their flocks will be more than $1.3 billion higher in 2008 than two years ago. But this same report also mentions a record oversupply of chickens in the U.S. There has to be a way to produce Ethanol and have affordable feed ingredient costs. We need to quit fighting over the pecking order and bring peace to the barnyard.