Astral Foods pledges aid to World of Birds
Will supply feed and pre-mixes
ASTRAL Foods has pledged R100 000 a month to support the World of Birds. The South African poultry producer announced yesterday that it planned to assist the World of Birds Sanctuary in Hout Bay, Africa’s largest bird park, with bird and animal pre-mixes and feed, poultry by-products, eggs and improvements to the general infrastructure.
Chris Schutte, the chief executive of Astral, said: “Despite their (World of Birds) well-publicised campaign on crowd-funding platform BackaBuddy and staff agreeing to take a pay cut in order to ease the financial strain, Astral’s management decided to become involved in an endeavour to assist the park.”
In May, the World of Birds said it needed at least R1 million to carry on with their services through the next season. The bird park said it aimed to subdivide the property and sell some land to try to stay open.
The outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (AI) in South Africa during last year’s winter resulted in the World of Birds having to be placed under quarantine after numerous of its bird species were tested positive. The public stayed away from Cape Town’s landmark and premier tourist attraction, perceiving AI as a threat, which impacted revenue earnings from the daily entrance fees.
Gary Arnold, the managing director of Astral’s agricultural division, said the company had gained extensive experience in eradicating and managing avian influenza at its farming operations in order to mitigate the risk of the disease as far as possible.
Astral reportedly lost at least R50m as a result of the spread of avian influenza during 2017
Arnold added: “We will also assist with the re-drilling of one of the boreholes on the World of Birds’ property in order to reduce the monthly municipal water bill.”