Farmer-owned co-operative Gold Kist, the second largest US poultry processor, said on Wednesday that the resumption of chicken meat exports to Russia would be slow and would harm its earnings through the summer.

Russia, the top US customer for poultry, on 13 April partially lifted a month-old ban on US poultry imports."This has been a difficult six-week period for the US industry in which product values have fallen below the cost of production, causing operating losses for most processors," Gold Kist president and chief executive officer John Bekkers said in a statement.