06/18/08 Challenge for Chickens

Challenges for Chickens. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Everyone knows that gas prices are high and of course the corn industry is soaring on demand but what is that doing to the poultry industry. Sue Broderick is the Communications Director for the Washington Fryer Commission who says it's a challenging time. BRODERICK: Well it's a challenging time right now for the Washington chicken industry. The growers have 3 main concerns and that would be energy, energy and energy. So we've used energy in the form of propane to heat our poultry houses. Some guys are on natural gas and both of those have skyrocketed in the recent months and they're having a hard time managing their costs that way. There is a 4-letter word floating around the fryer industry these days. The word is corn. BRODERICK: Yes, corn. Well corn affects those prices and corn also affects the feed prices that go into the chickens. The processors in Washington State, Foster Farms and Draper Valley have been very challenged with managing the feed rations because of those increases. The industry is looking into other feed stocks to supplement the corn. There have been concerns as well over whether there is a threat with avian influenza but Broderick says they have important safeguards in place. BRODERICK: Well certainly it's a concern that we have but it's really not a fear. Our industry has a standard operating practice called bio-security that we employ which means that we don't let anybody on to our farms that shouldn't be on our farms and primarily that only means people who work on the farms as well as someone from the processing company. Broderick says there are some other issues affecting the cost of chicken for the consumer. BRODERICK: Another input that has gone up that is in some ways related to energy is the cost of shavings. We use wood shavings as bedding our poultry houses and in the past 6 months the price of the shavings has doubled to the grower simply because with the economic times right now the building industry has declined and so the saw mills are going out of business or they're not cutting as much wood so we don't have shavings for the houses. Broderick does say that the poultry industry is relatively small in comparison to the larger producers down in the south and southeast. Tomorrow more on the poultry industry in the northwest. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.