Poultry International

increase in relation to November, according to ABEF – the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association.

With this result, 2008 exports reached a new record, reaching 3.64 million metric tons, which represents a nearly 11% increase in comparison with 2007.

For 2008, exports reached 3.6 million metric tons, with a value of $6.9 billion, a 5% growth in revenue, ABEF said.

UKRAINE
Ukraine to begin
exporting poultry to EU
in 2010

Ukraine plans to start poultry exports to the European Union in 2010, the chairman of the State Committee on Veterinary Medicine, Petro Verbytsky, has announced.

“We hope our poultry production rms are inspected [by EU specialists] this year. If everything goes through, in 2010, we could export poultry. We are competitive in price,” he said.

According to the chairman of the Soyuz of Ukrainian Poultry Producers, Alexander Bakumenko, the country produced a record 1.04 million metric tons of poultry in live weight last year, a 16% increase from 2007. is increase in production was driven largely by enterprises specialising in poultry production, which boosted output by 20% to 854,000 metric tons.

e state committee also said that Ukraine had reduced overall meat production in 2008 by 1.5% to 2.72 million metric tons live weight.

CHINA
China’s poultry meat
imports rise despite
more home production

China imported more poultry meat last year despite an 11% rise in home production.

China reportedly purchased 4% more fresh and frozen poultry meat from overseas last year, with import demand particularly high in the

Chinese fresh and frozen
poultry meat imports
Jan-Dec (000 metric tons)

Origin 2006 2007 2008

US 588.5 534.3 611.6

Argentin 27. 7 102.1 192.3

Chile 9. 1 4. 1 18. 5

France 1. 3 - 10. 4

Source: China Customs, GTIS.

second and third quarters, driven by increased trade arising from the summer Olympics.

e US maintained its position as primary supplier, increasing its market share to 73%, seven percentage points higher than 2007. Supplies from Argentina were also higher as it capitalised on the absence of Brazilian product.

Frozen chicken cuts accounted for 95% of all the fresh and frozen poultry meat imported in 2008, of which 57% was in the form of chicken feet, says the European Market Survey.