Brazilian chicken breast fillet led a broad decline in poultry prices over the past month, dropping 16% to around €2,890 per tonne. It was the steepest move in a month where every poultry benchmark Vesper tracks moved lower, from São Paulo to Bangkok to Jakarta.

The movers

Brazil set the pace. Alongside breast fillet, frozen chicken eased 6% to roughly €1,524 per tonne. The pressure traces back to a single piece of news: the European Commission left Brazil off its updated list of countries approved to export animal products to the EU, which means Brazil loses access to the European market from 3 September unless it can show compliance with new antimicrobial-use rules. The timing surprised the trade, coming shortly after the Mercosur deal was signed. Brazilian export volumes in May actually ran above last year, but Vesper’s analysts note the export-licence uncertainty could weigh on domestic prices, as supply that might have gone to Europe stays home.

Thailand saw the widest spread of declines. Chicken thigh and rump fell 13% to about €1,863 per tonne, while live-weight chicken, the upstream benchmark that feeds into every cut, dropped 10% to €912 per tonne. A softer live-weight price tends to pull the whole complex down with it, and that is roughly what played out across Thai carcass, breast and wing quotes through the month.

Indonesia rounded out the picture, with fresh chicken down 6% to €1,310 per tonne. There was no single catalyst in the market reporting for the Indonesian move, which sat in line with the broader regional softness.

Europe was the exception. French, Dutch and Belgian quotes held close to flat, kept in check by ample import supply even as disease pressure built in the background.

Worth watching

The contrast worth holding onto is between what prices did and what the market expects next. Every move last month was downward, yet the forward picture is firmer. If Brazil cannot resolve its compliance gap before September, a repeat of the 2025 bird-flu export ban could tighten European supply and lift prices into the second half of the year. Bird flu and Newcastle disease outbreaks in Poland, the EU’s largest producer, are adding to that pressure, and summer demand usually does the rest.