Source:  Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 2/12/10

The economics of the U.S. poultry industry are getting back in line, and its brightening prospects were reflected in the success of the annual International Poultry Expo, said John Starkey, president of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association in Tucker, Ga., which hosts IPE.

The show, held annually in Atlanta in January, drew about 19,000 attendees in 2010, up 7.9 percent from levels in 2009.

"There's more profitability [in the industry], and if you go back to 2009, we had a show on the heels of Pilgrim's Pride filing bankruptcy," Starkey said. "This climate is more positive this year."

While pulling itself back together financially, though, the poultry industry faces growing challenges from activists and others who question how the companies operate. That issue, Starkey says, is one that requires greater attention from everyone in the industry.

Starkey spoke with Meatingplace recently about these and other issues facing the poultry industry.

What feedback did you get from vendors about their experience at IPE?

Anecdotal as it may be, a number of equipment providers said they'd done several million dollars' worth of business on the show floor. The feedback and verbatims were positive.

It was a tough year to sell booth space [because] the vendors have had a couple of tough years. So we were down about 70 booths (808 in 2010, compared with 884 a year ago). That means we had two-and-a-half to three more customers per booth this year, and that's what pays the freight. Our attendee density was higher.

How was your international presence?

[IPE's] strength is the Western hemisphere: We had excellent crowds from South and Central America. Their poultry industry has been through the same thing ours [has], so it's good to see those folks return to the show in strength.

We had a delegation from Egypt, more than 100 people. From Latin America, we had close to 1,000. There were almost 200 from China and almost 150 from India. We partner with the Department of Commerce's International Buyer Program. They work through the embassies to get validated attendees and exhibitors to the show.

Because of the African presence, one of the comments we've gotten is that [the vendors] should show their smaller-scale equipment, because they're not as far along [in these developing economies as in the United States]. [Companies in developing economies are] still interested and need to take advantage of technologies available, just on a smaller scale.

How would you characterize the state of the poultry industry at the beginning of 2010?

I think our strength is in efficiency. We're an efficient business, an integrated business, the most effective means of production. I always like to take a minute and reflect on that: That allows our industry to be sustainable. If you go back 50 years, it was 4 pounds of feed to make 1 pound of chicken meat. Now it's less than 2 pounds of feed. That integrated model drives efficiency, and that makes us a sustainable industry.

Where our biggest challenges lie are in areas where people don't view it that way. It's incumbent on us to explain, for instance, that our industry is based on family farms. There are 30,000 broiler producers out there, and 95 percent of them are mom-and-pop. In other words, we have to do a better job of explaining ourselves.

A lot of our detractors are all about taking away choices. Folks ought to have a right to choose. We need to educate the public and the regulators and those who can have an impact on our operations about how we do produce any type of meat or protein product in the U.S. and the benefits of the methods that we choose.

What about a year from now?

Provided that the export market stabilizes, I think we'll be okay. I think it'll be a slow recovery for the economy in general, so the higher-end products — breast meat — are in less demand. That's what our model is built on, so that's going to be a slow recovery.

But the last two years have brought stronger prices. On the way of course we've had bankruptcies and hard times at different companies, but we've gotten to a place where efficiently run companies can make a profit.

I think it'll be a decent year.

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