Bird flu outbreak and impact on chicken prices worry

the outbreak of bird flu identified as AH5N1which already significantly affects various states, such as Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and has already been detected in New Mexico, in the United States, already worries the animal health authorities of our country, due to the impact it could have on the poultry production in the national territory, mainly from pollo y eggin a context in which the federal government has faced a difficult environment to control inflation, particularly that of food and beverages.

In USA It is recorded that as of October of this year, just over 47 million birds have died or have had to be slaughtered, very close to the record in that country observed in 2015, when it was necessary to slaughter about 50 million birds.

The issue is not minor, because in 2012, when there was also an important bird flu outbreak in Mexico, which forced the slaughter of nearly 22 million hens, which at that time represented 15.3% of the total number of laying hens that were counted in our country, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) detected no less impact on the National Consumer Price Index (INPC), which is the reference for measuring inflation, since in the space of a few months, the price of eggs, for example, went from having increased 5.90 percent in June 2012, to 40 percent, in September of the same year, just three months later.

According to the most recent inflation data from Inegi for the case of livestock products, among which are the pollo and the egginflation in the last year of this type of food is located at 15.7 percent.

In the case of pollothis is largely explained by the increase in the national consumption of chicken in Mexico, which the United States Department of Agriculture estimated for the end of 2022 at 4.8 million tons, while production will be 3.9 million tons.

Therefore, authorities such as the Federal Consumer Protection Agency (prophet) are attentive to the marketing practices of chicken meat y egg in our country, to avoid phenomena observed in the context of previous outbreaks of avian flu, in which Mexican companies listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, such as Bachoco, chaired by Francisco Robinson Bours, reported notable increases in their sales, despite reporting lower levels of production and falls in their avian population. The foregoing, because the increase in the prices of poultry products overcompensated for the fall in production, as was the case in 2012, for example.

In fact, coincidentally in those years, 2013, the then Federal Competition Commission imposed fines on companies such as Industrias Bachoco, Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Pollo de Querétaro and San Antonio for manipulating the prices of chicken meat, which were ratified. in 2015 by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.