Low poultry duty on EU ‘will decimate jobs in SA’
Poultry stakeholders demand a tariff of up to 40%, saying the new 13.9% safeguard duty is ‘hopelessly inadequate’
Major chicken producer RCL Foods, which owns the Rainbow and Farmer Brown chicken brands, says the government’s new 13.9% safeguard duty on imported bone-in chicken portions from the EU is "hopelessly inadequate". South African chicken producers, the South African Poultry Association and labour mainly blame "dumping" of dark chicken meat products, such as legs, for the industry’s woes as producers struggle to sustain operations. Scott Pitman, MD of the consumer division at RCL, says 1,355 workers, staff and management will lose jobs at the end of January. This is because exports of dumped chicken leg quarters are in great oversupply globally. "Northern hemisphere [consumers], who consume most of the chicken meat in the world, only desire breast meat and wings, and therefore the leg quarters are in oversupply — and Africa is one of the few places they can still sell it," he says. "But because of the oversupply they must lower their prices by whatever new tariff is imposed, otherwise ...
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