Marchers slam ‘EU dumping of chickens’
SOUTH Africa’s poultry industry is on the brink of collapse, it says, amid hotly-denied accusations that the European Union (EU) is dumping cheap chicken in the country in a dispute over free trade.
About 500 workers, former workers and company managers from the poultry sector marched on the EU headquarters in Pretoria yesterday, furious over cheap imports and mounting job losses.
But the EU has accused the industry of using it as a handy scapegoat for domestic production problems, and said the volumes of EU chicken imports were too small to be responsible for the crisis.
March organisers said 4 000 to 5 000 jobs had already been lost, and that 110 000 more were at risk in the industry, plus 20 000 in the feed supply sector. “Organise or starve,” one protest banner said. “Dumping destroys SA jobs,” another said. RCL Foods, South Africa’s largest poultry producer, last month laid off 1 350 employees – 20% of its workforce – and is selling 15 of its 25 farms.
“This issue has been growing since the EU started to send more and more leg quarters to South Africa at what we consider dumped prices,” RCL Foods managing director Scott Pitman, who was on the march, said.
“Not only have we taken a financial burden over the last five years, but the loss has got so big that we are going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut the size of our business.”
The poultry industry alleges that the EU dumps off-cuts of “dark meat” – chicken thighs and drumsticks – in South Africa at below-cost prices because the European market prefers breast meat.
“This is a form of waste disposal,” SA Poultry Association boss Kevin Lovell said.
On Monday, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe suggested the government should intervene by buying poultry farms that were closing down and finding new markets for their produce.
The EU said the South African poultry industry was blaming others for its own failures.
“When people are losing livelihoods, trade deals can be a handy scapegoat,” EU ambassador Marco Cornaro said on Tuesday.
“It is a distortion to think that it is the EU trade policy which is the origin, let alone the main source, of the current woes of the SA chicken industry.”
According to EU figures, EU exports account for less than 7% of the total South African chicken consumption, and EU imports of “dark meat” account for only 14% of local market consumption.
Cornaro said a lack of competition, a severe drought pushing up feed prices, rising electricity costs and injecting brine (salt water) were causing South African industry’s problems rather than EU imports.