Due to factors such as avian influenza, China's imports from the United States have been declining year by year.

Last week, China's Ministry of Commerce announced a six-month extension to the anti-dumping investigation into Brazilian broiler chicken products, which was launched last August. This extension will temporarily raise the price of Brazilian broiler chicken, giving Chinese poultry companies some time to develop. Therefore, Chinese poultry companies need to seize this opportunity to accelerate the development of the poultry industry and further reduce costs and prices.

Due to factors such as avian influenza, China's imports of broiler chickens from the United States have decreased year by year, allowing Brazil to become a major importer of poultry products to China. Statistics show that since 2016, China's imports of chicken from Brazil have remained at around 85%, mainly frozen chicken feet, wings, and bone-in chicken chunks. With the extension of the anti-dumping investigation, the price advantage of imported Brazilian chicken products no longer exists. How should China utilize this policy to promote the development of related industries?

China accelerates the mechanization of poultry farming and slaughtering to reduce prices.

Brazilian broiler chickens have become prevalent mainly due to their low prices. Although China has initiated and extended the anti-dumping case, this is not a long-term solution. To prevent Brazilian broiler chickens from significantly impacting the Chinese poultry industry, Chinese companies need to improve efficiency and lower prices. This process requires the assistance of large-scale farming and food machinery and equipment.

With further restrictions on poultry slaughtering in China, on-site slaughtering is prohibited in many areas. Therefore, chicken is mainly consumed in chilled or frozen forms. We know that the efficiency of using food machinery and equipment in both farming and slaughtering stages is incomparable to manual labor. Therefore, many areas have begun to use food machinery and equipment for farming and slaughtering, further reducing costs.

Take farming as an example. A company in Pingding County, Yangquan City, Shanxi Province, aims to create a full industry chain model encompassing breeding and research, farming and production, and meat and egg sales. They have added automated environmental control and central egg collection production lines to their chicken coops. These automated devices allow only two workers to collect eggs and monitor the condition of the chickens, providing perfect assurance for the sale of chicken and eggs. In the slaughtering process, equipment such as poultry stunning machines, scalding machines, defeathering machines, and eviscerating machines form a poultry slaughtering and cutting production line, allowing chickens to be processed from slaughtering to acid removal and quick-freezing packaging without touching the ground, greatly improving the efficiency of poultry slaughtering.

The country opens up more poultry markets, weakening the impact of Brazilian imports.

The statistics show that China's imported chicken market is firmly controlled by Brazil. This means that any dumping or issues with Brazilian chicken will directly affect China's chicken market. To reduce this impact, it is necessary to diversify chicken import channels and increase competition among imported chicken to promote healthy market development.

China is currently aware of the importance of diversifying the chicken import market and is accelerating the opening of more chicken import markets. In July alone, chicken imports were opened to three countries: five poultry processing plants in Belarus were approved to export poultry carcasses to China in the third quarter of this year; Ukraine and China signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral chicken trade; and Poland and China signed a chicken trade agreement. These agreements will facilitate the export of chicken products from these countries to China, which will help to weaken Brazil's dominant position in the imported chicken market.

Although China's poultry industry is large-scale, it is at a disadvantage in terms of price compared to imported chicken. To reverse this situation, relevant companies need to start with mechanized farming and slaughtering to accelerate cost reduction.