TANZANIA Meat Board (TMB) has said the increase in poultry farmers is the major reason for the increase in supply of birds in the market that resulted in the huge drop in prices.
TMB Registrar, Dr Daniel Mushi said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the information gathered from stakeholders in the poultry industry has uncovered that poultry meat imports are not the reason for the price decline in the market.
“The huge number of poultry farmers targeting the year-end festive season is behind the sharp rise in the supply of the birds in the market and fall of price,” he said.
The registrar noted that experience shows most poultry farmers target huge demand in the year-end festive season, but this time around the season has not been in favour of the farmers due to a sharp drop in prices contributed by the increased supply of birds in the market.
He talked of the need for attracting investments in modern abattoirs, equipped with cold rooms for conservation of poultry meat, particularly when the price is low due to increased supply.
“For sustainable growth of the poultry industry, there is a need for making a substantial investment in the modern abattoirs and cold rooms for the conservation of the meat when the market price is low,” he added.
Lack of cold rooms is forcing poultry farmers to sell their birds at a low price to avoid incurring losses particularly when it is already time for harvesting.
He said TMB visited various places where chicken meat is sold between December 14th and 15th this year including supermarkets, hotels, meat shops and farmers in Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Mbeya and Mwanza.
The TMB tour was aimed at inspecting the availability of poultry meat, imported meat and the average farmer’s price as well as market price.
In this survey, the TMB found no imported chicken meat in the market. The poultry farmers’ price was between 5,800/- to 8,000/- per bird.
The price of birds in Dar es Salaam where there is a huge number of farmers was about 5,800/- which is slightly low compared to other parts of the country like Arusha and Mbeya.
According to Chicken Development Roadmap 2017/18-2021/22, by the year 2022, the chicken industry is to a large extent efficient and commercially-run, both in commercial and household operations, using improved and highly productive breeds to ensure household food security and higher incomes, and significantly contributes to achieving national all-meat food security, and higher national income while being resilient to climate change and conserving the environment.
The overall target was to raise annual chicken meat production almost eightfold from about 60,800 to 465,600 tonnes and egg production from about 3.0 to 4.2 billion by the year 2021/22 through improved traditional family chicken (ITFC), tropical improved chicken (TIC) and expanded specialized/commercial chicken (SCC) with layers and broilers subsystems.
The chicken investment is mainly to raise a large number of broilers and improve family chicken to produce enough to offset the chicken meat and consumption gaps.
Furthermore, it is expected that the increase in chicken meat will also contribute to closing the meat production and consumption gap.