Here's some dinner advice for the inflation-weary food shopper: Buy the chicken breast, hold the corn.

Even as food prices worldwide have been soaring, the wholesale price of boneless, skinless chicken breasts is falling. They've declined more than 4 percent from this time last year, even as poultry producers are squeezed by the soaring costs of corn and soybean-based feed.

Food Crisis Since 2005, food prices have soared 80 percent, and analysts don't expect prices to abate soon. Here is a look at recent developments around the world.

The reason? Rising grain prices have made it cheaper to slaughter livestock than to feed it. So there's a glut of protein in the market, and an export bottleneck is preventing producers from sending the excess to hungry consumers abroad.

The country's largest poultry producer, Pilgrim's Pride, said it lost $111.4 million last quarter, placing the blame squarely on $200 million in additional expenses for the corn and soybean meal that turns little chicks into plump entrées. It also predicted another loss in the current quarter, as it sells chicken for 8 cents a pound less than it costs to produce.

"The current operating environment is among the most difficult I've seen in my 27 years in this business," Pilgrim's Pride chief executive Clint Rivers said on a conference call.

Bargain chicken is helping McDonald's keep a lid on its food expenses. The company said in April that it expects cheese prices to rise 30 percent this year, compared with only 5 percent or 6 percent for chicken. On Tuesday, it announced it would give away 8 million chicken-biscuit sandwiches on May 15 as it introduces poultry into its breakfast lineup.

These dynamics have made meat a bargain in the supermarket. Boneless chicken breast cost an average of $3.37 a pound in March, up just 1 percent from March 2007, according to Department of Labor statistics. Meanwhile, supermarket prices for a gallon of milk rose 23 percent and bread prices climbed 16 percent over the period.

Six poultry producers have announced plans to reduce production this year and shorten the length of their supply contracts, raising hopes in the industry that reducing the supply of chickens will lift the price of prepared breasts.

But a range of factors are working against the poultry industry, from stiffer competition with pork and beef producers to backups at the ports where quartered chickens begin their journey to eager consumers in China and Russia.

Pig and cow slaughterhouses are going gangbusters as farmers decide it's too costly to feed their animals with corn that costs nearly $6 a bushel. The resulting glut of protein on the market hog-ties chicken processors' ability to raise prices.

According to an April report from the Department of Agriculture, federal inspectors have seen a 5.9 percent increase in the slaughter of adult female hogs through the first quarter. The amount of pork in cold storage has jumped 25 percent in the last year. Beef slaughter is also at elevated levels.

"Cattle people are losing $100 a head right now," Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, said. "They have every incentive in the world to get those animals off of feed and into the market."

Adding to Pilgrim's Pride's woes, the company said it can't find enough containers to carry its chicken legs on cargo ships headed to export markets. Fewer suitable containers are landing on U.S. shores because the weaker dollar is crimping U.S. imports, Bob Wright, the company's chief operating officer, said in a conference call with analysts.

Containers that do arrive here are being diverted to the southern hemisphere to accommodate the suddenly very lucrative trade in rice, wheat, and other grains.

"There is plenty of demand for U.S. chicken in foreign markets," said Rivers. "There simply are not enough containers to move the product in a timely fashion."

Then there's the matter of efficiency, a slaughterhouse version of Moore's Law that could lead to overproduction. Technology that improves the efficiency of inspecting chickens for contamination is helping the industry move toward a standard processing speed of 140 chickens in 60 seconds—birds per minute, in industry parlance—up from the current standard of 71 to 91 b.p.m.

The chicken industry can hope for a reprieve as the weather warms up and the "summer grilling season" begins. Pilgrim's said it expects to see higher prices after Mother's Day, but others aren't sure the industry's woes will end anytime soon.

"We haven't seen the worst of this yet," said the Chicken Council's Lobb. "The chickens are still eating their way through corn that was five bucks or four-fifty."