Poultry production to stop from Saturday if demands unmet: BPA

The Bangladesh Poultry Association (BPA), representing small-scale farmers, has raised concern that corporate syndicates are pushing the poultry industry towards “collapse”. In protest and in defence of marginal farmers’ rights, the association has issued a seven-point demand.

In a statement to the media on Thursday, October 30, the BPA announced that if its demands are not met, egg and chicken production across the country will be halted gradually from Saturday, November 1.

According to the statement, the sector’s looming collapse has put the jobs of 5 to 6 million people at risk, 40% of whom are women and 60% educated unemployed youth.

The BPA said that despite global prices of feed ingredients such as soybean meal, maize, amino acids and vitamin premix remaining low for the past three years, the domestic market shows the opposite trend due to government inaction and corporate influence.

To save the poultry industry and its workforce, the BPA demanded, breaking up corporate syndicates and setting government-regulated prices for feed, chicks, medicines and vaccines, ensuring a fair and transparent market free of corporate control, including farmers’ organisations in policymaking, introducing regular audits and public reports on feed and medicine markets, fixing fair prices of eggs and chickens with a 10% profit margin based on production cost, providing collateral-free loans, incentives and subsidies to affected farmers, and taking administrative action against corrupt and corporate-biased officials in policymaking positions.

The BPA further alleged that several corporate syndicates have monopolised the feed market and are creating artificial shortages, causing uncontrolled price hikes of feed, chicks and medicines. As a result, small-scale farmers are suffering daily losses while struggling to survive, and the country’s largest agro-based sector now faces a severe crisis.