Demand for other protein-rich food items such as pulses and value-added meat products like chicken nuggets, sausages, and salami has also surged since December end as a high-protein diet is recommended to speed up recovery from Covid-19 infection and to boost immunity, they said.
“From end December, we are seeing a surge in chicken consumption despite prices going up due to high input costs,” Jagdish Kadyan, coordinator at Poultry Federation of India, told ET. “People are having chicken twice a week since the outbreak of third wave of Covid.” He said chicken consumption had come down after Diwali to an average of once in 10 days.
Vignesh Soundararajan, executive director at leading poultry company Suguna Foods, said the demand has increased since the pandemic outbreak in 2020.
“Healthcare specialists have vouched for rich protein intake and chicken being an excellent source of protein has become a staple diet for consumers across age groups,” he told ET. “Delfrez, our retail brand that deals with packaged meat, has also witnessed a growth as younger customers prefer and opt for safe and hygienic components.”
Soundararajan said production costs have increased slightly in the last few months because prices of major poultry feed maize and soya have increased almost 50% and 80%, respectively.
Kolkata -based Keventer Agro, a leading player in packaged vegetarian and non-vegetarian frozen food category, too, has witnessed a surge in demand in recent weeks.
“We have seen an uptick is sales of frozen food segment since the beginning of the New Year over the previous month,” said Mayank Jalan, chairman and managing director of Keventer Agro. “There has been an increase in ecommerce deliveries and modern trade, whereas sales in general trade have been lower due to the third wave.”
One of the main reasons for the surge in consumption of ready-to-cook and value-added foods is the convenience factor – there is low involvement in terms of time and effort taken to prepare the meal, Jalan said.
This convenience factor has come as a major relief in the ongoing third wave as people are spending more time at home and many who had started going to office are now working from home once again.
Pulses too are witnessing a surge in demand as a protein rich food. “We are also coming up with awareness programme on promoting pulse as a protein-rich food and have asked the government to distribute pulses through public distribution system,” said Bimal Kothari, vice-chairman of Indian Pulses & Grains Association (IPGA).
Annual production of poultry meat in the country is 4.3-4.5 million tonnes and the industry aims to raise it to 6.3 million tonnes by 2023.
