It's the same way with the cattle industry. Not all parts of the bird are preferred by Canadians. Primarily dark meat goes to the Philippines and Taiwan. In fact, we've created quite a market in the Philippines, because in western Canada we feed wheat and barley as opposed to corn and soybeans. It provides a whiter meat, and in fact they like that in the market there. And so we've done that.
It becomes a real transportation effect. We have a couple of key processors who are aggressive; they're based in B.C., and one has operations in Alberta and the other in Saskatchewan. Transportation becomes a key element in terms of being competitive in that market. If you are in central Canada, you've got to be trying to export towards Africa. You just can't make up going across this country with frozen product.
That market is key from that perspective of just getting total value on a bird. We export about 6% or 7% of our production. That's about what we need, to sell those parts at probably the best value we can get. It's pretty stable at that point. The U.S. exports about 17% of its chicken, and it's stable. It has been at that level for 15 years. It needs to balance its market. We don't need to go more in terms of export; we just need that balance.
We had an AI outbreak in the Fraser Valley. Philippines is the key market for both those processors. Taiwan is second. There are a number of other countries, but those two are key, and we need them open as soon as possible.