“The Italian poultry meat sector in the year of Covid showed its strong resilience, confirming itself in fifth place among EU producers, with production growing by 1.8%, in contrast to the European average (-0.1% And according to the estimates of the EU Commission, in 2021 Italy will be the only one of the top five EU producing countries with a plus sign (+ 0.1%) with a production of 1.39 million tons, in line with the ‘last year”. This was reported by the president of Unaitalia Antonio Forlini during the assembly of the trade association that protects and promotes the Italian agri-food chains of meat and eggs. “The sector has held up better than the others thanks to a national supply chain characterized by strong vertical integration and self-sufficiency (107.5%) which made it possible to adjust production to demand in real time. However, there is still a great deal of uncertainty on the profitability front, given the dizzying rise in the prices of raw materials, which grew by 42% from January to May, which must be recognized by the large-scale distribution in order not to weaken Italian production, as well as the higher production costs, which are inevitable to achieve the sustainability objectives required by the ‘From Farm to Fork ‘”. “If on the one hand, this strategy will generate more sustainable EU products with greater added value, – adds Forlini – on the other hand it will increase the gap in terms of production costs and price competitiveness between European productions and those of third countries. And c “There is a very high risk of an increase in non-EU imports into our country, in favor of cheaper but less sustainable consumption. It will be fundamental to protect EU production from the indiscriminate import of foreign raw materials, which would put at risk not only the self-sufficiency in Italian poultry farming but the entire Italian and European animal husbandry. In this sense we feel the ratification of the EU-Mercosur agreement, which will increase the quota of imports of white meat from South America, still a strong threat “.