The United Broiler Raisers Association (UBRA) said that the farmgate price of chicken has increased to P143 a kilo due to lack of supply.

In January, farmgate prices were around P133 a kilo.

In a radio interview, UBRA chairman emeritus Joji San Diego said that the rise in prices were caused by the lack of supply due to cases of avian flu in countries where chicken is usually imported from.

"Our top import of chicken is Brazil. But there were cases of avian flu there so the importation was stopped and our supplies were affected," San Diego said.

UBRA has pushed for government measures to lessen the reliance on imported chicken due to a lack of control on factors that may affect its supply.

"We've told the government that we shouldn't keep relying on importation because we can't control that. We can grow all the needed supply of chicken in our country, then why doesn't the government do that?" San Diego said.

San Diego said that despite vaccines being available to stop the spread of bird flu, there are still strict measures on the transport of chicken which affects supply.

"If the concern is bird flu, they've made it hard to transport live chicken due to bird flu but there's a solution - there's a vaccine. Then why don't they want us to use the vaccine?" San Diego said.

San Diego explained that it is hard to predict the supply of chicken due to the imports of chicken meat and hatching eggs.

"We can't project how the production will be. You'll raise chicken but you don't know how much you'll earn if you sell your chicken," San Diego said.

Despite the rise in chicken prices, wholesale farmgate prices of chicken eggs have lowered, with small size at P4.10 and medium size at P5.50. Yzabela Velez-White/DMS