EDITORIAL: The fox in the hen house
The main challenge facing South African poultry producers is that, between them and their international competitors, the playing field is not level
The long and turgid chicken saga continues, with the government announcing at the weekend that it had initiated a process to develop a shared response to the "crisis in the poultry industry" and the country’s second-largest chicken producer announcing it would shed half its workforce in its efforts to respond to cheap chicken imports from the EU, US and Brazil. Whether or not cheap chicken imports are indeed a "crisis" is entirely a question of perspective. For the three companies that dominate SA’s chicken industry and cannot seem to produce competitively, the imports do seem to be a crisis, if the strident lobbying is anything to go by. For the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs or whose jobs are at risk, they definitely are. But for South African consumers, cheap staple food imports are anything but a crisis. Indeed, the trouble with chicken, which is the main source of protein for millions of poor households, is that it is not nearly cheap enough. Poultry prices, main...
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