JAMAICA’S major supplier of chicken meat, Jamaica Broilers Group, is assuring its customers that the company has adequate supplies of Best Dressed Chicken to meet consumer demand and that there should be no price increases for chicken.

The company’s president and CEO, Robert Levy, admitted that its contract farms lost 140,000 birds during the rains that have been affecting Jamaica over the last week. However, he said this represented less than five per cent of the total number of chickens being grown by Jamaica Broilers’ contract farmers. Additionally, the loss approximates only one-and-a-half days of processing and is offset by the group’s maintenance of two weeks of inventory.

“This is ample supply to meet market demand and means that there should be no increase in price,” Levy said.

He pointed out that Jamaica Broilers has already begun to work closely with its farmers to clean up their chicken houses in order to help them return to production as swiftly as possible.

“In the meantime,” he added, “I want to emphasise that there should be no hiccups in the supply-demand chain.”