Badrul Hisham Mohd, a deputy secretary-general of the ministry, said about 94% of Malaysia’s chicken output of about 54 million birds per month, is for local supply.

Local production capacity is able to meet domestic needs, he said in a panel discussion with Bernama TV.

He said the level of food supply in the country had not reached crisis level as claimed by some quarters but was still sufficient.

There were “some hiccups” with regard to food supply, particularly chicken and wheat, but it had not affected the domestic supply, he said.

He said that about 72% of the overall cost of rearing chicken went into paying for the feed, which is imported from countries such as Brazil and Argentina.

“The corn used for domestic chicken feed is no longer grown in Malaysia on a big scale; because of this, the ministry is moving towards creating a cornmeal industry in order to solve the problem of feed imports,” he added.

Badrul Hisham also suggested that palm oil producers allocate a portion of their farm land to grow corn towards reducing the dependency on other countries for cornmeal as chicken feed which was costly.

On the issue of wheat, he said India’s decision to ban the export of its wheat had no effect on Malaysia as the main sources of this commodity were countries like Australia and the United States.

He added that India exported only about 1.9 per cent of its wheat to Malaysia while MAFI and the ministry of domestic trade and consumer affairs were making efforts to solve the supply issue to ensure the people had sufficient food supply.