While opinion can be forgiven as misguided, there are so many factual errors compounded by a lack of knowledge in Bronwyn Nortje’s article ("Local upsets, not foreign birds, to blame for industry’s plight", Business Day, January 19) that it bears little resemblance to the truth. Here are the facts. Far from failing to embrace modern production techniques, when rated by the performance efficiency factor — the global industry standard production measure — SA poultry producers are regularly rated in the top tier worldwide; we are excellent farmers. Nortje claims chicken prices have increased; they have not. What has changed is Statistics SA’s sampling using pack size prices instead of average prices per kilogram. Introduced early in 2016, this abnormal data would have corrected itself from the end of this month, resulting in a more accurate picture although the change in brining regulations will continue to distort the data for a while longer. Our price problem has nothing to do with d...
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