KARACHI: No stranger to wild swings in both directions, the retail price of chicken has gone up almost 35 per cent from a year ago, higher than the overall inflation rate over the same period.

But something is fundamentally different this time around. Unlike before, the high price of chicken isn’t likely to swing back to the normal level anytime soon, according to industry representatives.

Chicken is expected to become substantially expensive in the coming months.

“You haven’t seen inflation (in chicken) yet. Its price is going to go through the roof in 2024,” said Khalil Sattar, owner of K&N’s, one of the largest poultry production companies in the country with operations in feed milling, breeding, processing and retail.

Chicken is becoming expensive because its production is dropping like a stone. The main reason for the reduced production, says Mr Sattar, is that the government banned the import of soybean — a key ingredient of poultry feed — in October 2022 on the pretext of its genetically modified (GM) nature.

Feed constitutes about 75pc of the input cost in poultry. A rich source of protein mainly produced by the United States, Brazil and Argentina, soybean makes up 30pc of poultry feed. Soybean meal is used as feed mainly in the poultry sector while its oil is meant for human consumption.

Its imports totalled 1.9 million tonnes in the last calendar year with the US share being 32pc, according to the US Soybean Export Council (USSEC).

Tariq Bashir Cheema, who served as federal minister for national food security and research in the cabinet of Shehbaz Sharif, took the lead in getting the imports of GM soybean banned late last year.

Soybean originating from North and South Americas is overwhelmingly GM. Pakistan has been importing non-GM soybean from African countries, but its quality is low and it costs more because it arrives in containers, not shiploads.

Massive decline in production

There’re only about half a dozen companies that import all of grandparent stock or GPs in Pakistan. GPs are the birds that produce the parent stock which, in turn, produce broilers for mass consumption.

Bird production can be calculated using the number of GPs imported in any year. On average, 725 GPs produce a parent stock of 25,000 birds, which breed 3m broilers of 2.02kg of live weight each.

According to Mr Sattar, annual imports of GPs have come down from 267,000 birds to just 65,000 this year. This means the number of broilers available for consumption in Pakistan will be down almost 76pc this year to just 269m from about 1.1bn a year ago.

Mr Cheema, the former minister who championed the banning of GM soybean imports last year, told Dawn that the poultry industry is acting like a “mafia” to force the authorities to allow the use of a “known carcinogenic ingredient”.

“They’re playing with the lives of people. GM soybean causes cancer. They operate like a cartel. They want everyone to consume chickens raised on GM feed just to save a few bucks,” he said.

His opposition to GM is because it alters the DNA of an organism — a seed in this case — by using genetic engineering techniques. GM soybean is a relatively new phenomenon and sceptics like him say its adoption at the mass level may cause unknown side effects in the long run.

However, more than 90pc of all soybean, corn and cotton crops in the United States are currently GM.

“US soy has played an integral role in providing the poultry industry with high quality, nutritious and sustainable feed ingredients,” said USSEC Regional Director Kevin Roepke while speaking to Dawn.

He said GM soybean has been proven in the international market to be “as safe as conventionally bred crops” — something that is “backed” by the World Health Organisation, European Commission, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Mr Roepke said the US embassy in Islamabad has also been “tremendously helpful” in engaging with relevant ministries and stakeholders for the unbanning of GM soybean imports.

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Ministry for National Food Security and Research said the issue falls in the ambit of the Ministry of Commerce. The spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2023