Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 9/10/13

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has announced plans to buy frozen drumsticks and thigh quarters out of cold storage in an effort to reduce a surplus of poultry dark meat from the market.
The agency’s official solicitation will be issued in the near future for products to be delivered from Nov. 1, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2014.  As of last June 30, inventories of chicken leg quarters were 157 percent of inventory levels a year earlier.

“There has been a significant build-up in dark meat chicken parts in cold storage,”  NCC President Mike Brown said recently in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack requesting a special purchase program for dark meat parts before the fiscal year ends September 12. “Such a timely purchase program will prove to be a most worthwhile measure to help balance the white meat/dark meat situation for the chicken market.”

Russia, traditionally a major export market for U.S. poultry producers, and South Africa both are managing an oversupply in their respective markets. Meanwhile, the competing Mexican poultry production industry has been recovering quickly from a fight with avian influenza that threatened its flocks.
Closer to home, consumption of wings is expected to soar over the next five months, as long as football teams are playing, and chicken breast remains popular, but those trends leave drumsticks and thighs behind.

AMS buys a variety of high-quality food products each year to support the National School Lunch Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program and the Emergency Food Assistance Program. USDA also makes emergency food purchases for distribution to victims of natural disasters.

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