A new report from Rabobank's global Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory (FAR) department examines the challenges faced by the US chicken industry and the implications for necessary change in the industry going forward.

Entitled 'This is not your grandfather's chicken industry – Thoughts from a banker's perspective', the report is a wake-up call to the US chicken industry by Rabobank's senior poultry sector experts.

"The US chicken industry is encountering permanent rather than cyclical changes which will require significant changes in how the industry operates in the future," says the report.

Those challenges include:

• Structurally higher and more volatile feed input costs
• Maturation of the US domestic market
• Rapid globalisation of the industry, requiring US companies to develop new export products for new export markets
• Increasing government regulation which makes it difficult to achieve competitive cost management and efficiency, and
• Excess supply in the industry, which has been made difficult to remedy given recent court rulings which inhibit companies' ability to eliminate capacity or even reduce production.

"Rabobank believes the industry will adjust eventually, but those who will survive and thrive in the future will be those who recognise that the operating environment has changed forever, and alter the way they run their business," according to the report.