Govt urged to remove price capping on chicken meat

LAHORE: Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) has demanded the government remove price capping imposed on chicken meat rates. Talking to reporters, PPA Vice-Chairman Malik Muhammad Sharif said as chicken meat is a perishable item and it cannot be kept at farms for more than 4-5 days. He said approximately

a loss of about Rs5,500,000 to Rs6,000,000 on a single shed is being faced by a poultry farmer and in the long run due to such massive loss the owners of poultry farms would close their business.

He said poultry product prices are self-regulated by several factors that are neither under the control of poultry farmers, nor public sectors. He observed poultry prices fall and rise according to a mechanism, and any intervention by the public sector to deal with low prices of poultry products is counterproductive.

He said at present poultry is providing 40 percent of the meat that is consumed and around 1.5 million people are employed in the sector. He said prices of poultry meat and eggs are normally determined by the basic principles of supply and demand, but seasons, Islamic festivals, diseases at farms, loadshedding, inflation and others factors also play a role in this regard.