What effect has the current economic climate had on the poultry industry?
For the reasons mentioned above, the poultry industry is in the best position to deal with the economic climate that we have seen in the last year. Poultry meat and eggs are relatively cheap and haven’t seen the drops in consumption globally that we’ve seen for pork and beef products. Producing poultry is the most efficient use of your feed dollar, so they’ve been relatively buffered from feed costs. The feed cost issues have certainly hurt; but they haven’t hurt the poultry industry as much as other animal production systems. Finally, the poultry industry, due to their short adjustment cycle on production capacity, can take excess production out or bring new production on-line in a very short period of time, adjusting to market forces much more quickly than other producers. Overall, while recent economic drivers have been difficult for everyone, they’ve been less difficult on the poultry industry, and this same industry is perhaps uniquely poised to take advantage of a future recovery
