Chicken is one of the most consumed proteins in the world. It shows up on nearly every restaurant menu, fills grocery store shelves, and anchors countless food service operations. Yet businesses — from fast-casual chains to supermarket buyers — have faced repeated supply disruptions. And 2026 is shaping up to be another difficult year.
This article breaks down why chicken shortages keep happening, where supply stands right now, and what businesses can do to protect themselves from the next disruption.
Why Chicken Supplies Keep Running Short
The first thing to understand is that chicken shortages rarely have a single cause. They tend to result from several problems hitting at once — across different parts of the supply chain and in different regions.
Disease Is the Most Disruptive Factor
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), commonly known as bird flu, forces producers to cull entire flocks when an outbreak is confirmed. Those birds are gone immediately — and replacing them takes months, not days.
The problem doesn’t end with the culled flock. Hatchery output drops too, which means fewer birds entering the production cycle downstream. The USDA’s February 2026 WASDE report cited persistent HPAI outbreaks as a key reason it revised broiler production forecasts downward for 2026.
Reproductive Failures Make Recovery Slower
Disease compounds an existing vulnerability: hatch rates. In 2021, one major U.S. supplier switched to a new rooster breed that turned out to have poor fertility. The result was fewer eggs hatching and fewer birds reaching processing weight. That single breeding decision contributed directly to a national supply crunch.
Texas A&M AgriLife experts noted that when production contracts — whether from disease or fertility problems — prices typically follow upward. That pattern is playing out again in 2026.
Weather Events Damage Infrastructure Fast
Extreme weather can shut down production almost overnight. In early 2021, winter storms across Texas triggered power grid failures that forced poultry plants to shut down and delayed livestock shipments. Broiler houses collapsed in Mississippi. Hurricanes Beryl and Melissa caused significant livestock losses in Jamaica, damaging coops, feed storage, and water systems — damage that has slowed the island’s poultry recovery well into 2025 and 2026.
Labor Shortages Slow Everything Down
Meatpacking plants, cold storage warehouses, and distribution networks all depend on large, consistent workforces. COVID-19 exposed how fragile that dependence is. During the Omicron wave, absenteeism disrupted “every part of the production process” — including warehouses, selectors, drivers, and loaders. When multiple roles go understaffed simultaneously, the slowdown ripples through the entire supply chain.
Market Structure Can Create Artificial Scarcity
In some markets, the shortage isn’t purely physical. A CNA Insider investigation into Malaysia’s chicken supply reported allegations that a small number of large players effectively control how much small breeders can sell and at what price. According to those reports, loans extended to small farmers are used to gain leverage over supply volumes and pricing. These are reported allegations, not established legal findings — but if accurate, they suggest that supply can be constrained even when production itself hasn’t collapsed.
Where the Shortage Stands in 2025–2026
The supply environment in early 2026 reflects many of these pressures at once.
U.S. poultry production in January 2026 came in at 4.49 billion pounds — 3% below the same period the prior year. Chicken specifically was down 3%, with turkey down 4%. Brownfield Ag News attributed the decline to slower processing speeds and lighter average bird weights.
The USDA’s February 2026 WASDE report reinforced that picture, trimming its broiler production forecasts due to ongoing HPAI outbreaks and weak hatchery data. Industry analysts have described the current environment as a “high-disease, low-expansion” period, with wholesale prices expected to stay elevated as processors work through supply losses caused by culling.
Jamaica continues to face a supply crunch rooted in hurricane damage from the past two years. Recovery has been slow because of feed shortages and limited access to day-old chicks — the starting point for rebuilding flock numbers. Jamaica’s Ministry of Agriculture has been attempting to balance local recovery with strategic imports, a delicate policy challenge with public health implications.
Malaysia remains under pressure from a combination of labor constraints, rising feed and input costs, ongoing disease issues, and the market structure concerns noted above. These aren’t new problems, but they’ve become persistent ones.
Global Output Is Rising, but Local Shortages Are Real
It’s worth separating global trends from local realities. At the global level, the picture is not one of collapse. RaboResearch’s Global Poultry Quarterly for Q2 2026 forecasts approximately 1.1% year-over-year growth in global poultry production, driven by more birds being slaughtered and heavier average weights. The USDA’s broader livestock and poultry outlook projects total red meat and poultry production in 2026 at roughly 108.4 billion pounds — about 1% above the prior year.
So global supply is not in freefall. What’s happening is more targeted: localized shortages driven by disease, weather events, or structural market problems in specific regions. For businesses operating in affected markets, the distinction between “global production is up” and “my local supplier can’t fill my order” matters a great deal.
This gap between aggregate forecasts and on-the-ground reality is where most of the business risk lives.
How Shortages Affect Business Operations
The immediate effect of tighter chicken supply is higher wholesale prices. When producers cull flocks or slow processing, less volume moves through the system. Processors pass higher costs to wholesalers. Wholesalers pass them to operators. Restaurants and retailers either absorb the margin hit or pass it to customers.
For foodservice operators, chicken shortages create pressure on multiple fronts. Specific cuts — particularly value-added products like boneless wings and tenders — become harder to source because they require more processing capacity. A business built around a chicken-heavy menu faces the choice of raising prices, reducing portion sizes, or pulling certain items temporarily.
For retailers, the challenge is shelf continuity. Shoppers notice when a product is missing or when prices spike suddenly. Processed chicken products (pre-breaded nuggets, marinated strips) are often the first to disappear because they depend on specialized processing steps that bottleneck faster than fresh cuts.
Contract pricing adds another layer of complexity. Businesses with fixed-price agreements may find suppliers unable to fulfill volume commitments. Those without contracts face the spot market, which moves quickly when supply is tight.
Practical Steps Businesses Can Take
Managing chicken supply risk isn’t complicated, but it does require planning ahead rather than reacting after the fact.
Diversify Your Protein Mix
Reducing dependence on any single protein is the most straightforward hedge. Restaurants that added pork, turkey, or plant-based options during the 2021 shortage had more flexibility to shift their menus without losing customer traffic. The same logic applies now.
Source Less Processed Products When Supply Is Tight
During shortages, whole chickens and basic cuts tend to remain more available than processed, value-added items. Operators willing to work with whole birds or bone-in cuts can often maintain supply while competitors wait for tenders or nuggets to come back into stock.
Build Relationships With Multiple Suppliers
Dependence on a single large supplier creates a single point of failure. Businesses that maintain relationships with regional or local producers — even if those suppliers handle a smaller share of normal volume — have backup options when a primary supplier is disrupted by disease or weather.
Review Contract Terms Before the Next Disruption
Force majeure clauses, volume flexibility provisions, and pricing escalators are worth examining now, not after a shortage hits. Understanding what your supplier agreements actually say about supply disruptions can prevent difficult renegotiations under pressure.
For business owners navigating volatile supply chains and commodity markets, resources like Startofbiz can offer practical context on managing operational risk in challenging conditions.
What to Expect Going Forward
The data available through early 2026 points to continued tightness in chicken supply, particularly in the U.S. market. HPAI remains active, hatchery performance is weak, and the industry is not in an expansion mode. Prices are expected to stay elevated in the near term.
Globally, modest growth is forecast for 2026 — but that growth is concentrated in regions not currently dealing with severe disease pressure or extreme weather recovery. Businesses in affected markets should not expect global output numbers to translate into local relief anytime soon.
The longer-term trajectory depends heavily on disease management. If HPAI outbreaks slow and hatchery performance recovers, supply should gradually normalize. But that timeline is genuinely uncertain, and businesses that plan around a best-case scenario take on unnecessary risk.
The businesses best positioned to manage through shortages are those that treat supply disruption as a recurring operational reality — not as a rare emergency. Building flexibility into menus, supplier relationships, and contracts before the next disruption is far cheaper than scrambling for alternatives when supply runs out.
Chicken will remain a core protein across foodservice and retail. But the days of treating it as a stable, always-available commodity are worth reconsidering. The structural and environmental factors driving shortages are not going away — and neither is the need to plan around them.
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