Poultry: jobs threatened

IF THE South African poultry industry is in danger of a meltdown because of dumping from the US, 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, the 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 ones.

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, particularly from job losses, plant closures and unfair competition.

But he also told parliamentarians that the DTI believed the poultry industry was 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 being destructive to job creation.

But Donald Mackay of the Association of Meat Importers of South Africa took another tack. “We don’t agree there is a problem,” he said, adding that if South Africa wanted to be competitive, it needed to double its exports.

Still, whatever is to blame for the malaise in the industry, the prediction that 130 000 jobs could be lost cannot be ignored. It is a figure that is frighteningly high. We cannot afford to have ultimately pointless arguments about who is to blame for the current state of affairs.

We realise that there is 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 the jobs of South Africans – even if it means taking a fresh look at the tariffs on imported goods such as poultry.