Import writer’s fowl play

Talk about hypocrisy. Georg Southey conveniently avoids the truth about chicken dumping, while accusing the industry of hiding the facts (Poultry sector foxes public by crying wolf, February 28).

Dumping – selling goods here below the cost of production — is what is killing the local chicken industry. Illegal dumping is costing thousands of jobs and thousands more are at risk. Yet not once does Southey refer to dumping — he speaks only of “imports”.

Southey, whose organisation represents the importers who are making fortunes by buying chicken at dumped prices and selling it high on South African markets, pretends that the only problem is that the local industry cannot compete with imports.

The local industry is remarkably efficient — a study conducted by a world-leading agricultural institute, Wageningen University and Research Centre, found it to be the fifth most efficient chicken producer in the world. SA is on average 25% cheaper than EU countries and would compete well against them.

But no industry can compete against dumping. EU countries are dumping their massive surplus of bone-in leg quarters — the brown meat EU consumers do not want. They dump it in bulk at any price they can get.

This is the truth importers seek to hide from South African consumers.

Why doesn’t Southey tell the public about his organisation’s very profitable role in buying these dumped imports? Why doesn’t he admit that his importers would lose if dumping was stopped and competition was fair?

It is importers who have most to gain if the local industry collapses, as it did in Ghana. It is importers who would profit if dumped imports took over the market and 130,000 South African workers with possibly 1.3-million dependants lost their jobs.

If Southey wants to make a real contribution to the debate on dumping in SA, let him talk about dumping and not pretend that it’s only about “imports”.

Kevin Lovell

CEO, SA Poultry Association