Poultry claims are incorrect

JEAN LE Palisseur’s letter (“To accept poultry tariff costs and quotas is a mistake” The Star, February 16) is riddled with so many inaccuracies and factual errors that it renders any points made simply unbelievable.

There is no “threat of job losses”, this a reality.

Following the closure of several poultry farming enterprises and processing facilities, the latest victims are the 1 350 Rainbow employees who have lost their livelihoods.

Many more are set to follow across the poultry sector as well as other industries that depend on us for their survival. These job losses are certainly not “temporary” and to suggest this is extremely callous.

To refer to an apartheid past as a reference point for the current or future duty and tariff regime is completely uninformed. Far from protectionist, after apartheid collapsed following the birth of our new democracy in 1994, South Africa’s sanctions-era economic model was replaced with a free market that ranks among the most unprotected in the world.

This includes the agriculture sector, rated better than the US, similar to Europe and only slightly worse than Brazil for production efficiency.

Chicken prices have certainly not more than doubled in a “few years”, nor have they “soared” as Le Palisseur claims.

In fact, poultry prices up until October last year did not increase at all.

In the past 10 years poultry prices consistently lagged behind food price inflation.

South Africa’s poultry sector is far from “monopolistic”. There are small, medium and large-scale producers, growers, hatcheries, feed and equipment suppliers and related industries which are collectively responsible for the employment of 130 000 people.

As most of South Africa’s major producers are publicly listed companies, their accounts really are an open book.

Contrast this with the real “poultry moguls”, a handful of private white-owned importers whose collective 560 000 tons of imports last year, including dumped bone-in portions, dwarf the production of our single biggest producer.

The question here is why Le Palisseur would write such unadulterated manufactured truth and who he represents, for it is certainly not the South African consumer, workers or industries that depend on fair trade and an even playing field for their survival.

Sanctions-era economic model was replaced by a free market

CEO, South African Poultry Association