Sunday Tribune writes that more than 30,000 much-needed jobs could be created if the government blocked chicken imports. That is according to the SA Poultry Association (Sapa), which believes the scrapping of imports would end the crisis in the local chicken industry.
The impact of imports on the industry was best illustrated in 2017, when RCL, the company that owns Rainbow Chicken, sold 15 of its 25 farms in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu-Natal, and retrenched 1,350 workers. Other heavyweights in the industry, Country Bird and Mike’s Chickens, dismissed 1,500 and 1,000 workers respectively. Izaak Breitenbach of Sapa’s broiler organisation said statistics showed chicken imports reached a record high last year. “Every ton of imports represents South African jobs lost or not created. We have worked out that we could create 30,000 jobs by replacing imports, which were worth R6 billion last year,” Breitenbach indicated. Sapa said it could not understand why the government had allowed the wholesale “dumping” of imported chicken in the country, when SA ranked among the top producers of chicken in terms of cost and quality. Marthinus Stander, chairperson of Country Bird, one of the top three chicken producers in the country, said the proliferation of imports was a “crying shame and a missed opportunity”.
- Read the full original of Mervyn Naidoo’s report on this story at Sunday Tribune
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