Published in Industry Insights
In EU Poultry, the Audit Has Become the Trade Barrier
A European Commission audit found significant and systemic shortcomings in Thailand's poultry export controls, and our view is that audit findings, not tariffs or quotas, are now what decides which poultry actually reaches Europe.
Martina Osmak
Director of Marketing
MeatBorsa's take
This section is our reading of the news, not reported fact. The confirmed figures are further down, clearly separated.
A European Commission audit of Thailand's poultry export system, carried out in June 2026 and reported in the past week, found that the guarantees carried on export health certificates are undermined by what the auditors called significant and systemic shortcomings. Our view is that the important part is not Thailand. It is the pattern.
Three weeks earlier, the EU removed Brazil from its approved list of exporters for poultry and several other animal products over antimicrobial rules, a change we covered when it took effect on 3 September. Two of the four origins that supply most of Europe's imported poultry have now been publicly questioned on control systems within a single quarter. We think that is not a coincidence, and we expect audit findings to keep doing the work that tariffs and quotas used to do.
For anyone buying imported poultry into Europe, this changes where the risk sits. A trade agreement tells you what duty you pay. An audit tells you whether your supplier can still ship at all, and it can change with a few weeks of notice. We expect buyers with long positions in imported breast and leg meat to feel that first, because those are the lines where a single origin often covers a large share of the volume.
Our practical reading for the next few months:
Treat establishment-level approval as a live contract term, not background paperwork. Ask for the approval number and check it rather than trusting the country listing.
Assume a substitution clause is worth more than a small price concession. The cost of an origin losing access mid-contract is larger than the few cents you win on the tender.
Expect European producers to use these findings hard in commercial conversations. Farm bodies are already framing it as a fairness argument, and buyers will hear that argument at the negotiating table.
What we assume, and why we could be wrong
Our view rests on a few assumptions, and each of them can fail.
We assume the Commission will keep acting on audit findings rather than filing them. It may not. An audit that identifies shortcomings is not a ban, and Thailand has not lost access. The usual path is corrective action agreed with the exporting country, which can end quietly with no trade effect at all.
We also assume that the remaining approved origins cannot simply absorb everything. If Ukraine and other suppliers expand faster than we expect, the practical squeeze on European buyers would be much smaller than we think and prices would barely move.
What the audit and the numbers actually say
The Commission audit of Thailand's poultry export system took place in June 2026. Auditors confirmed that an official control system exists, but said the guarantees certified on export health certificates are undermined by significant and systemic shortcomings, covering traceability, veterinary controls, verification of HACCP food safety procedures and the separation of products eligible and ineligible for the EU market. Staff did not always understand certain EU export requirements.
Reporting on the audit also noted that poultry products destined for the EU had been made using minced meat from an establishment not authorised for those exports, and that at two processing plants operators could not show that EU-bound products contained only eligible meat.
The Ulster Farmers' Union, which represents farmers in Northern Ireland, responded on 18 September by calling for import standards to be upheld. Deputy president Clement Lynch said the findings show why scrutiny of imported food matters, argued that imports should meet the same standards required of local producers, and pushed for clearer country-of-origin labelling. He said the issue goes beyond one country and one product, naming beef as well as poultry.
The trade picture behind all this comes from the European Commission's poultry meat dashboard published on 16 September 2026, covering January to May:
EU poultry imports totalled 449,518 tonnes carcass weight, up 6.1% on the same period of 2025.
Brazil supplied 193,194 tonnes, up 27.1%, in the months before it lost EU access.
Ukraine supplied 96,721 tonnes, up 13.9%, and Thailand 74,198 tonnes, down 0.4%.
The EU broiler price in week 37 was 289.89 euro per 100kg carcass weight, 4.2% below the same week last year.
Poland alone accounted for about 21% of EU poultry meat production in 2025, ahead of Spain, France, Germany and Italy.
What we are watching next
Whether Thailand's authorities publish a corrective action plan, and how quickly the Commission accepts it. That timeline is the clearest signal of how far enforcement will actually go.
Whether Brazilian volume that used to enter the EU starts showing up elsewhere in Europe's wider trading neighbourhood, including the United Kingdom, and what that does to offer prices there.
And whether the EU broiler price, still below last year, starts to firm as approved import supply narrows. If it does not by the end of the year, our reading of the squeeze was too strong.
Sources
Thai poultry audit sparks call for robust import controls - Agriland
Thai poultry audit sparks call for tougher UK import standards - FarmingUK
DG AGRI Dashboard: Poultry Meat, 16 September 2026 - European Commission