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The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) poultry committee will conduct a protest in Cavan on Tuesday morning, alongside under-pressure producers.
The protest will assemble at 11am on Tuesday in Cavan town to highlight the “jeopardy” the sector is in to the main retailers including Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Dunnes and SuperValu.
Poultry farmers say they are “very concerned about their future”.
The IFA claims that the EU average price for eggs has increased by 13.2% over the last year. However, Ireland is one of only two member states where the price has decreased by 8.4% over the same period.
The protesters say this is “simply unsustainable”.
Cost inflation
IFA poultry chair Andy Boylan said: “Poultry growers are caught in a classic cost-price squeeze that has to be addressed urgently. Retailers cannot rely on producers to keep going in this situation.
“Family farms that produce Bord Bia quality assured (QA) chicken and eggs have seen their costs of production increase at an unprecedented rate in the past year.”
Boylan described how the costs of gas, energy, labour and animal feed have all seen increases not witnessed by the sector in half a generation. Feed costs alone are up 36% on last year.
“Irish inflation shot to a 14-year high in October, which has had a damaging effect on the sector.”
Retail price
The Monaghan farmer warned that “without an immediate increase in the wholesale retail price, to be passed back to egg and chicken producers, the entire sector is in jeopardy.
“We produce top-quality Bord Bia QA produce at prices which are not sustainable.
“We intend to highlight the absolute necessity for our costs to be recovered from the food chain immediately.”
Boylan said poultry farmers are “suffering and losing money”.
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