LETTER: Chicken dumping is an African issue

Dennis Wilson wrote a thoughtful letter about the issues facing the SA chicken industry (“No end in sight to chicken wars”, October 13). However, he has overlooked an important aspect: the battle for survival against dumped and predatory imports is not just an SA issue. It is an African issue, and indeed a global one.

The predators are often the world’s major chicken producers — Brazil, the EU and the US — which have huge surpluses of brown meat such as leg quarters because they make their profits selling breast meat to northern hemisphere markets. Those surpluses are dumped in any market that will take them.

SA is one of those target markets, though an important one because it has fewer import barriers than most. The chicken industry in Ghana was devastated by EU imports. Cameroon, Senegal and the Ivory Coast have been among other African countries targeted, and Caribbean countries have raised the same complaint.

SA is now the front line of defence against this assault (“chicken wars” is a term promoted by importers to deflect attention from their aggression) and tariffs are an important regulatory tool to curb market predation.

The prospect of a master plan, which Wilson regards with some cynicism, raises hopes that the government and the industry can chart a way forward. The aim is to curb imports to a reasonable level (in the EU it is 7%, while in SA imports have grabbed a huge 30%) and promote local investment, local expansion and local jobs.

If that succeeds — and it might even have the support of some importers — it will be a model for Africa, the Caribbean and all the other countries that have been victims to the predations of the world’s big chicken factories.

Francois Baird

Founder, FairPlay