When will occur is a price rise chicken feed?

When will occur is a price rise chicken feed?

If you buy free range chicken at Sainsbury's you may have noticed a price rise recently. Up from around £4.19 a kilo in December for a whole bird to £4.75 a kilo this week, according to the farmers who produce them and monitor retail prices.

Chickens are fed on grain and the price has been rocketing, so no surprise that they suddenly cost more - rather a lot more, in fact, with that 14% hike which works out at roughly 87p more for an average size bird. But now here's a mystery. The farmers who actually produce the chickens say they have had a cut in how much they are paid imposed on them retrospectively. They say that in February the large processor that supplies Sainsbury's with free range birds, 2 Sisters Food Group (which pays the feed costs) told them that it was paying them 6p per bird less for chickens that they began farming in mid-December and which have already been sold to customers in the shops. The company also insisted that this new lower rate is what they will be paid from now on.

The farmers involved are a cooperative of 47 poultry producers in the West Country and three of the group have now lodged claims in court to try to get back the money they say they are owed by 2 Sisters. "This is an illegal retrospective breaking of contractual commitments on payments for birds already shipped to supermarkets and purchased by customers," their chairman Bob Shipley said. Their real fear is that what 2 Sisters calls "temporary support" farming families may end up having to call bankruptcy.

...Read More