Poultry Processor May Go Bust Due To High Fodder Prices, HUF, Animal Rights Group

Szentes-based Hungerit, specialised in duck and goose processing, is to lay off 200 of its 1,500 employees due to sales problems, Napi Gazdaság said. The company has also recently decided to stop slaughters and market only broiler ducks, chicken, geese and several breaded meat products.

This alone makes Hungerit's purse some HUF 7-8 billion leaner, but still gives hope for survival. Hungerit, founded in 2000, is one of Hungary's largest-capacity poultry processors. It closed last year in the black on net sales of over HUF 20 billion. Owner and chief executive József Magyar told daily Délmagyarország that the company might even go bankrupt due to a drastic rise of fodder prices and a persistently strong forint.

Hungerit tried but failed to pass the impact of increasing fodder prices onto its customers, mostly multinational retail chains. The company, which exports the bulk of its produce, cannot cope with the strong forint either.

It has also added to Hungerit's predicaments that Vienna-based Four Paws, an animal rights group, has called for a boycott of products made from force-fed animals. 

Four Paws Foundation has started an international campaign against force-feeding with the help and participation of several European countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Force-feeding is already forbidden in 14 European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and The Netherlands).

“I call on the government to introduce a legal ban on all means of production of Foie Gras in Hungary. In my shopping trolly I do not allow any Hungarian poultry, until the horrible suffering of Hungarian force fed animals will be banned forever," the petition of Four Paws, signed by more than 18,000 people, says."

Source: Portfolio Online Financial Journal