City Press reports that government departments and local poultry producers will meet in the next few weeks in a last-ditch bid to save the country’s chicken industry.  

The sector is on the verge of collapse as it battles with a flood of cheap chicken quarters that are allegedly being dumped by EU countries and the US.  Several of the country’s biggest chicken producers, including KwaZulu-Natal’s iconic Rainbow Chickens, are pushing ahead with mass retrenchments and farm sell-offs.  Rainbow alone will cut more than 1,350 jobs at the end of this month.  Kevin Lovell of the SA Poultry Association said on Friday that government, led by the Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI), had committed to a summit aimed at keeping the industry alive.  Producers will ask government to introduce regulations that will in effect halve the amount of chicken entering SA.

• Read this report by Paddy Harper in full at City Press
• Read too, EU cries foul over chicken crisis claims, at BusinessLive

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