Chicken Shortage Looms | Se avecina escasez de pollo

By Bolivia Tv, Eju.Tv:

Impact of road blockades will be felt until July with reduced chicken meat supply, poultry farmers warn

Cochabamba “received around 500,000 fewer baby chicks, when the department normally receives approximately 1.3 million baby chicks per week,” revealed the vice president of the Cochabamba Poultry Farmers Association (ADA), Iván Carreón.

The road blockades, now lasting 27 days, will prolong their impact even into the month of July with a reduced supply of chicken meat in Cochabamba and other food supply centers across the country, because the production chain is being interrupted, warned the vice president of the Cochabamba Poultry Farmers Association (ADA), Iván Carreón.

What is happening is that in recent weeks Cochabamba, one of the country’s main chicken meat producers, received 500,000 fewer baby chicks out of the 1.3 million it normally received each week.

In addition, because of the highway closures, it is not receiving grains such as corn and soybeans, which are the birds’ main food source.

“In recent days, housewives across the department (in Cochabamba) must have noticed that chicken prices have gone up. So one might ask, why would prices rise if chicken is actually being taken to the western part of the country? The answer is that much of the chicken sold in the department of Cochabamba comes from the department of Santa Cruz. Well, for more than a week now finished chicken has not been arriving in the department, so people are consuming the chicken produced in Cochabamba, and obviously that is not enough to meet Cochabamba’s needs,” he explained.

But in addition, baby chicks are also no longer arriving to stock the farms, and “that is an even more delicate problem, because in approximately seven weeks, it is not that there will be no chicken — there will be chicken, but in smaller quantities.”

He specified that last week Cochabamba “received around 500,000 fewer baby chicks, when the department normally receives approximately 1.3 million baby chicks per week.”

“With the reduction in the number of baby chicks arriving from Santa Cruz, the consequences will be seen in seven weeks, when there will be less chicken available. But by that we do not mean there will be no chicken; rather, the supply of chicken meat will decrease and prices will adjust according to the market,” Carreón warned in an interview with Bolivia Tv.Información boliviana.

Added to this is the fact that for more than a week corn and soybeans have not been reaching the department because of the blockades on the route connecting the department with Santa Cruz.

The ADA vice president called on government authorities and the protesting sectors to engage in dialogue and end the road blockades because, in the end, Bolivian households will be the ones to feel the impact.

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