The Board is calling on all BC chicken growers to embrace growth and increase their capacity by building more barn space.
British Columbians, and Canada, love eating chicken. The demand for fresh, locally-grown, quality chicken is increasing year over year. Ultimately, good news—thank you, BC!
Yet, keeping up with this demand has been a challenge in the past few years. Being transparent, chicken farmers in BC, collectively, have been falling short of their allocated kilograms — what we are expected to grow for our province every growing cycle — for several cycles now. The industry has been hit with some compounding impacts — chick shortages, disease, weather events, and more, to name a recent few — and is responding in a number of ways. But to get a firm handle on this lag in production, BC’s chicken industry needs to make proactive moves.
The BC Chicken Marketing Board is urging growers to build. All signals point to a literal, ‘concrete’ solution that could address impacts and prepare the industry for growth: building more barns to sustainably increase BC’s capacity for raising healthy chickens.
For more rationale and findings that signal this call to build, Read Memo: Embracing Growth & Why Build Barns.
For the consumers, rest-assured that any chicken barn in BC will be built or expanded to provincial codes and is regularly inspected to meet the highest standards in food safety and animal welfare.
Thanks to Supply Management, responding to that demand through the quota system means that each chicken grower will participate in that growth. Growers benefit from a proportional allocation method (“Pro Rata”) where a percentage of any increase in provincial allocation and market demand is delivered equitably to every chicken grower.
It is essential for BC families and for all of Canada that BC’s chicken industry remains trustworthy and sustainable — and be equipped to meet allocation and to keep up with market growth.
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This is an important and complex topic for chicken growers in BC. The board staff will continue to support growers as they navigate their allocation trajectory and capacity planning. All growers are welcome to contact the office at info@bcchicken.ca or 604-859-2868.