March 2017 | Business View Caribbean

92 93 uality Poultry Products (QPP) is a co-op owned, chicken producing company, located in the communi- ty of Spanish Lookout in the Cayo District of Belize. It was founded by Mennonite cultivators who came to Belize in the 1950s from Mexico and whose roots go back to Canada and Russia. “The initial founders were my uncle and my dad,” says QPP’s General Manager, Raymond Barkman. “They started raising chickens in the late ‘60s. At the time, they were the only chicken producing company in Belize.” Because much of the country’s poultry was still being imported from the United States, Barkman says that the brothers began help- ing all the other chicken farmers who came along later so that, one day, Belize could be- come self-sufficient in poultry. “So they worked together as a group,” he relates. “Nobody ever dreamed that we would become self-sufficient. But they advanced the poultry business very quickly. And now there is no importation of chicken.” Quality Poultry Products became an official company in 1975. Today, it has relationships with more than 130 local broiler farmers. It also operates its own retail/wholesale outlets in various parts of the country including Span- ish Lookout, Belize City, San Pedro, Belmopan, Dangriga, Orange Walk, Corozal, and Punta Gorda. Quality Chicken can be found in every major Belizean food supermarket, restaurants (including the company’s own four restaurants Quality Poultry Products The leader in Belize Poultry Quality Products