How Min. of Agriculture Chicken Importation, Jamaica Broilers and Caribbean Broilers production to ease 2016 Chicken Shortage

Fellow Jamaicans who love chicken, the struggle is indeed real. Chicken lovers, brace for impact as Chicken is coming!!!

The Minister of Agriculture Derrick Kellier has announced plans to deal with the chicken shortage by the weekend starting Saturday January 16^th 2015 as reported in the article “Chicken Leg Quarters To Be Imported, Government Grants Licence For Five Weeks”, published Wednesday January 13, 2016, The Jamaica Gleaner.

A part of this plan is the granting of import licenses to import four containers of chicken Leg quarters per week for the next five weeks. These leg quarters are to be imported from parts of the US of A and Canada that have be given the green light to export chicken to Jamaica.

The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Derrick Kellier made these comments during the official opening of the Best Dressed Chicken Cumberland hatchery in Portmore, St Catherine, on Tuesday January 12^th, 2016.

The plan is to import Chicken Leg quarters to satisfy the unusually high demand for Chicken in Jamaica since Christmas 2015. If this is the plan, then thing will be back to normal for Chicken lovers as I'd predicted in my blog article entitled “Why the Jamaican Chicken Shortage of 2015 might be ending in 2016”. 

So what of boosting local production?

Ministry of Agriculture and Chicken Importation - Local production for long term Chicken shortage salvation

The Ministry of Agriculture has not forgotten them, as Jamaica does need to boost Jamaica’s capacity to grow enough chicken to feeds its population instead of spending US dollars on imports!

The Ministry of Agriculture is collaborating with the two main chicken processor in Jamaica, Jamaica Broilers and Caribbean Broilers to boost local chicken production to satisfy the increasing local demand for chicken as reported in the article “Gov't implements measures to meet demand for chicken meat”, published Tuesday, January 12, 2016, The Jamaica Observer.

The new Jamaica Broilers Best Dressed Chicken Cumberland hatchery in Portmore, St Catherine is being built at a cost of Ja$14 million to produce some 625,000 baby chicks monthly or 7.5 million chickens annually as reported in the article  “Jamaica Broilers Pumps $14m Into New Hatchery”, published Tuesday January 12, 2016 by Tameka Gordon, The Jamaica Gleaner.

With these measures in place, Jamaica Broilers expects the chicken shortage to ease by the weekend with normality returning over the next three (3) weeks according to their competitors Caribbean Broilers. We'll see if these measures will make any real difference or if it'll be half-baked chicken plan, pun intended.