Uninsured birds a calamity if flu runs rampant

SA’s poultry industry could be left counting costs that run into billions of rand as no insurance cover exists to cater for the outbreak of a natural disaster such as bird flu.

In the event of a large-scale outbreak of bird flu, the country’s poultry industry could be dealt a significant blow, considering that it is already weighed down by imports from Brazil and the EU and is still reeling from the drought last season.

In 2016, South African producers exported poultry products worth R1.36bn.

In June, the country recorded its first cases of bird flu in Mpumalanga and the Free State, after an outbreak that affected neighbouring Zimbabwe and, further up north, Uganda.

AgriSA’s head of natural resources, Janse Rabie, said it was willing to engage with stakeholders in the poultry industry with a view to possibly coming up with levies, given the absence of insurance cover, to at least cushion the industry from natural disasters.

“In SA, there doesn’t appear to be an insurance product made for poultry producers.

“If the worst came to bear, as we have seen in parts of Africa and in Europe, it would be a blow to the South African poultry industry.”

Rabie added that the stages involved with chicken breeding, which included a process from layers to the abattoirs, were complex and unattractive from a commercial point of view.

“Unlike crops, which can be insured, the poultry industry is not insured as there are many day-to-day processes and so there isn’t an insurance product, although there is scope for the possibility of levies being introduced,” he said.

Charlotte Nkuna, an executive at the South African Poultry Association, said the cost of an insurance premium “could be quite prohibitive” and ruled out the need for insurance given the limited scale of this outbreak of bird flu.

“This is not the first outbreak of disease in SA. It’s something that can be managed and there are ways of reducing the risk of spread of the disease,” she said.

Gary Arnold, the MD for agriculture at Astral Foods, said the company did not consider the isolated outbreak of the disease on one of its farms to be of “material impact” that would warrant insurance cover.