When the price of chicken went up fractionally in early March, it caused quite a stir.
Now, the increase of 6 cents per 50-pound crate works out to just over a tenth of a cent per pound-but never mind, everyday consumers didn't want to hear it.
Last week when she visited Quality Poultry's operation in Spanish Lookout she found out why they needed the increase:
You might be surprised to know but the poultry industry requires a high level of workforce specialization - it's more than just a packing assembly line. With the recent minimum wage increase to $5 and the upcoming one to $6, the poultry industry have had to find ways to retain staff in an increasingly competitive job market where labour is scarce. And finding that is the recent 6 cent increase on a 50 pound carte:
Raymond Barkman, General Manager - Quality Poultry Products
"Well, the six cents, I can explain that very easily. So we haven't gone up with chicken in four or five years. We had the minimum wage increase and we had the other one that is going to happen soon or so they say. So what we did at our company, we already made it happen. The minimum wage increase is both the one that already happened and the one that is coming. So we set that price up to where it's going and that's In fact, I've done the numbers because percent-wise, our wage, our labor has gone up 27%, but we're only raising the chicken 3%. So that is just literally to subsidize some of the labor costs."
And with the state of the art infrastructure at all the facilities from hatching to packaging, poultry producers say that the 6 cent increase is fractional compared to the investment made:
Armando Cowo, Manager - Belize Poultry Association
"As you can see, it's not easy to replace the labor force that we have trained and employed in the industry and I said that on sunup. It's not easy to pick someone off the street to walk in here and do this. This takes a lot of training, our employees have gone through a lot of training sessions, we have brought specialists in to look at ventilation, to look at heat control to look at everything and therefore to retain our labour force we have to pay them better than I would say better than the general labour force but it's worth it and to retain that labor force so they don't go anywhere else, we gotta pay them better and part of the justification in raising like I said is to meet the labor force demand one and two to meet the innovation and sustainability that you are currently seeing with your own eyes."
But could the company increase its revenue flows by focusing on the export market? Well, it's complicated:
Raymond Barkman, General Manager - Quality Poultry Products
"Well, we've tried, but it gets a little hard to export chicken because honestly, everybody is very protective on the chicken side because of the-I don't know why. So exporting, of course, we're trying. And I believe we will in the very near future. But it's just a lot of procedure. I mean, we have all the protocols in place. We are a HACCP certified company. There's nothing that's not... We are ready to export to any country in the world. But getting it into the country is the challenge."
A challenge QPP - with all its advances - may have to embrace in the future.
Jaleeza Roberts, 7 News.
