No doubt, income from poultry production constitutes a significant share of the total household income across all production systems. However, apart from generating cash income for producers, poultry keeping contributes to livelihoods by providing protein and other nourishments to consumers.

Globally, more than 60 billion chickens are killed for consumption every year. Nigeria is the second largest chicken producing country in Africa after South Africa (SAHEL 2015 and FAO 2019). The Nigerian poultry industry comprises about 180 million chickens which produce more than 450 billion tonnes of meat and 3.8 million eggs per year. In Nigeria, meat is the most consumed poultry product with a greater preference for broiler meats.

One of the greatest challenges (perhaps the strictest one) local poultry farmers often contend with is dumping and over flooding of the local market with foreign processed chickens. Researchers experienced that despite the ban on the importation of frozen foods into Nigeria, smugglers still managed to smuggle about 1.5 million tonnes of frozen chickens into the country. This poses great health risks to Nigerians. Tekedia News