Explain to me how lobster, a luxury food, carries an import duty of 40 per cent, while chicken, the staple protein for working families, is taxed at over 200 per cent in Jamaica.

In Jamaican supermarkets, a whole chicken weighs, on average, of 1.768 kg (3.89 lb). That bird costs about $1,860. Meanwhile, in the United States, the very same chicken sells for just US$5.00 ($809.00), less than half our price. Jamaicans are paying nearly 125 per cent more for the same protein.

And before anyone rushes to say, “Lisa, we don’t want imported chicken from the US,” here’s the spoiler: We already eat imported chicken. The chicken backs and leg quarters flooding our wholesale markets come straight from the United States.

Now, look at the regional picture. In the Cayman Islands the average cost per pound for a whole chicken is CI$2.39 (US$2.87). Come January 2026, the minimum wage there will be CI$8.75 per hour (US$10.50). With just one hour of work, a Caymanian can buy 3.89 pounds of chicken.

Here in Jamaica, our minimum wage is about $400 per hour (US$2.50). That buys only 0.66 pounds of chicken, barely enough for one serving. To take home a single whole chicken, a Jamaican minimum wage earner must work nearly five hours.

To put it plainly: In Cayman, one hour of work secures a family-sized portion of protein. In Jamaica, that same effort barely stretches to feed a teenager.

This is the silent crisis of protein poverty and the cruel irony unfolding in our beloved Jamaica. Of the three essential macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and protein, it is protein that most decisively determines resilience, healthy aging, and the body’s ability to fight disease.

Protein builds strong muscles, repairs tissues, and supports immunity in ways no other nutrient can. Yet here, at home, protein has become a luxury.

This is the quiet crisis at the heart of every grocery bill. Families walk the aisles and see chicken — once the reliable, affordable centrepiece of the Jamaican dinner plate — now priced like a delicacy. A tray of thighs or breasts that once fit within a weekly wage has slipped out of reach. Too often protein is pushed off the plate, replaced by starches that fill the belly but not the body. Calories, yes, but not nutrition.

I have been sounding this alarm for years in Parliament and in these pages. The truth has only become starker: When a nation cannot afford protein, children fail to thrive, adults slide into frailty too soon, and chronic disease accelerates. Our hospitals fill not just with crash victims or infections, but with men and women slowly undone by malnutrition disguised as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

This is not a dietary inconvenience. It is a national emergency. Protein poverty does not look like famine. It creeps in quietly. It is the mother who buys chicken back instead of chicken breast because that is all she can afford. The father who stretches a pot of rice and gravy for six with only scraps of meat for flavour. The child who goes to bed with a full belly but a weak body, starved of the nutrients needed to grow and learn.

The numbers confirm what our eyes already see. The Ministry of Health’s Nutrition-at-a-Glance 2024 report found that 67 per cent of Jamaican households experience low food security, their diets lack the quality and variety required for health. Another 5 per cent face very low food security, cutting meals, skipping protein altogether, and living with hunger. In a nation of song and sunshine, this is a devastating indictment.

Doctors warn that inadequate protein doesn’t only stunt children, it accelerates aging in adults. Without enough protein our elderly lose muscle mass, develop frailty, and become vulnerable to falls, fractures, and chronic illness. Protein is not a luxury for the wealthy. It is the difference between independence and dependency, between vitality and decline.

A BROKEN POLICY MODEL

The uncomfortable truth is that Jamaica’s own policies make protein more expensive than it needs to be. We still cling to an import-substitution model crafted for another era, a relic of protectionism that no longer serves the people it was meant to protect.

Take poultry, the protein that should be the most affordable and abundant on every Jamaican table. Instead, it is buried beneath a maze of tariffs, stamp duties, and General Consumption Tax (GCT). For years these layers of taxation have pushed the effective rate on imported chicken to as high as 260 per cent.

We guard this fortress of protectionism as if the industry were still fragile, still in its infancy. But decades have passed. The sector has matured. And yet, the ordinary Jamaican consumer continues to pay the price.

The irony is glaring: The poultry industry itself still relies heavily on imported feed and inputs. So the model we cling to does not make us self-reliant; it simply makes chicken more expensive for the poor.

And here is the cruellest twist: While Jamaicans pay these inflated prices at home, our so-called local producers are free to sell competitively abroad — supplying markets in the United States, Cayman, and across the wider Caribbean.

In other words, they are allowed to compete globally, yet remain shielded by protectionism here at home. So, protected locally, competitive internationally, with the burden falling squarely on the Jamaican consumer.

Another paradox: Local chicken is protected as if it were a wholly Jamaican product, yet the bulk of its cost comes from imported corn, soy, and additives. We are not shielding local ingenuity; we are shielding inefficiency. Worse still, when global feed costs fall, our retail chicken prices never follow suit. Consumers pay more, regardless of international trends.

And what of the permit system for chicken backs and necks, the cheapest protein cuts for the poor? Reports from the Integrity Commission have shown how opaque and discretionary this system is. A handful of players dominate permits, shaping access to the very foods low-income Jamaicans rely on. This is not free enterprise; it is a food monopoly masquerading as food security.

TOWARDS A PROTEIN JUSTICE AGENDA: A MORAL IMPERATIVE

What, then, must we do? We need nothing less than a policy reset:

• Reduce tariffs on poultry products to a reasonable level. Duties above 200 per cent cannot be defended in a modern economy. Moderate rates would give consumers relief while pushing producers to become more efficient.

• Cut duties on inputs — corn, soy, vaccines, and equipment. Protecting outputs while taxing ingredients is a contradiction.

• Reform the permit system. No more discretionary approvals enriching a handful of middlemen. Permits must be transparent and competitive.

• Build an international-standard central slaughterhouse. Farmers across Jamaica should be able to take their chickens to a single facility where they can be processed, inspected, and packaged to the highest global standards. This would eliminate inefficiencies, guarantee food safety, reduce duplication of costs, and create a fair market in which small and medium farmers can compete alongside large ones.

• Invest in innovation. Jamaica cannot depend forever on imported feed. Research into alternatives, from local legumes to insect protein, can reduce foreign exchange pressure and support farmers.

• Make public health the guiding principle of food policy. Success must be measured not just by the profits of one company, but by whether Jamaican families can put protein on the table.

This is more than economics. It is morality. Every Jamaican deserves the right to a healthy life. Every child deserves the nutrients to grow and learn. Every elder deserves the dignity of aging with strength. Yet, today, our policy choices are pricing those rights out of reach.

We cannot hide behind the slogans of the past. We cannot continue to justify a system that protects monopolies while our people suffer. We must ask ourselves: Who are we protecting? If the answer is not the people, then the policy must change.

Let us be bold enough to admit that the old model has failed. Let us design one that balances producer incentives with consumer needs, encourages efficiency rather than inefficiency, and recognises nutrition as the foundation of national development.

Imagine a Jamaica in which no mother must choose between chicken and bus fare, where no child grows up protein-deficient, and where no elderly man must age into frailty because he could not afford the nutrients he needed.

That Jamaica is possible. But it will not happen by accident. It will happen only if we have the courage to reset our policy.

The pot must boil, yes, but not with starch alone. It must boil with dignity, with health, and with the protein our people need to live long and strong.

Lisa Hanna is a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister in the People’s National Party Administration