SA and EU spar over chicken meat ‘dumping’
Angry workers and managers plan to march on the EU headquarters in Pretoria to protest against cheap imports and mounting job losses
SA’s poultry industry says it is on the brink of collapse due to hotly denied accusations that the EU is dumping cheap chicken in the country in a dispute over free trade. Workers, former workers and company managers from the South African poultry sector will march on the EU headquarters in Pretoria on Wednesday, 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 volumes of EU chicken imported to SA were too small to be responsible for the crisis. Organisers of the march said that 4,000-5,000 jobs had already been lost, and that 110,000 more were at risk in the industry, plus 20,000 in the feed supply sector. RCL Foods, SA’s largest poultry producer, in December 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 SA at what we consider dumped prices,"...
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