Protect poultry jobs

IF THE South African poultry industry is in danger of meltdown because of “dumping” from the US the EU and Brazil, our government is duty-bound to protect local jobs. It’s as simple as that. Last week, at a public hearing on the industry hosted by the portfolio committee on Trade and Industry, Garth Strachan, a Department of Trade and Industry (dti) deputy director-general, described the poultry industry as a key component of our agricultural sector, with 48 000 direct jobs and 63 000 indirect jobs.

Over the past few weeks, the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) has been driving home a message of impending doom, predicting a “bloodbath” of lost jobs if the government does not step in quickly to protect the industry from “dumping” by overseas exporters to South Africa.

Choosing his words carefully, Strachan acknowledged trade measures were required to protect the poultry industry from job losses, plant closures and unfair competition. But he also told parliamentarians that the dti believed the poultry industry is competitive, although South Africa’s ability to produce mechanically deboned meat was limited.

The South African Poultry Association, through its chief executive Kevin Lovell, spoke of 6 000 jobs lost in the past year because of “dumping” by overseas competitors, and of chicken imports as destructive to job creation.

But Donald Mackay of the Association of Meat Importers of South Africa took another tack. He said if South Africa wanted to be competitive they had to double their exports, but they were not. Still, whatever is to blame for the malaise in the industry, the prediction that 130 000 jobs could be lost cannot be ignored.

We cannot afford to have pointless arguments about who is to blame.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in international trade with big countries “dumping” their products in the markets of smaller trading partners, while adopting protectionist policies for their own producers.

Our government must do all it can to protect jobs – even if it means relooking at tariffs on imported goods such as poultry.