LETTER: Chicken dumping duties on EU countries are irrelevant

I am not sure if the public is aware of the worldwide chicken situation, as we in this country are so obsessed with alleged dumping from the EU and Brazil.

Imports from every EU country have  been banned for many months because of avian influenza (bird flu). The fact that provisional dumping duties have just been levied on four EU countries is therefore irrelevant, as those markets are closed to SA anyway.

Historically, when bird flu is totally eliminated in any country, the SA veterinary authorities have produced a list of conditions before reopening that particular market. For example, SA must send an inspection team to the country concerned to confirm the situation for themselves (even though World Animal Health authorities have already approved the reopening). For some reason the local vets never seem to have the funds to send an inspection team across. This is obviously politically driven.

So for the foreseeable future there will be no imports from EU countries. Brazil, the world’s biggest poultry exporter, is open for business but the new provisional dumping duties have closed a large part of that market to SA. That leaves us with the US, the only other major exporter of chicken to SA.

Exceptionally high antidumping duties were imposed on US bone-in chicken cuts (by far the most popular cut in SA) in 2001, which in effect closed it off to SA. Some years later the US chicken lobby placed huge pressure on SA to lift the duties or face losing some African Growth & Opportunity Act trade benefits. SA succumbed to the threats and in 2016 chicken imports from the US resumed under a limited quota agreement, with built-in annual volume increases.

The current applicable volume is about 70,000 tonnes per annum, allocated on a 50/50 basis between previously disadvantaged importers and traditional chicken importers, with some other built-in BEE conditions. The US is now also being overrun by bird flu. Millions of chickens have been euthanised in more than 20 states thus far, and many major chicken-rearing areas are badly affected.

This  raises several questions:

• Will SA ban American chicken shortly, and what sort of internal political fallout will result because of the sensitive quota allocation rules?
• Will chicken prices in SA go through the roof due to an import shortage and local poultry now battling high feed costs, which with the existing worldwide economic crisis is certain to drive prices up substantially?
• What will happen to chicken, this country’s favourite and healthiest high protein food, if we are also hit by a bird flu outbreak? That’s not far-fetched, as a number of African countries have already been savaged by the virus.
• Are there any lessons to be learnt from all this? Of course — allow the markets to operate freely without continuous duty increases and localisation interferences.

There will only be one big loser if we continue with market manipulation, and that is the consumer, who has the right to expect to obtain the best quality food at the lowest possible price.

We are facing a dangerous and volatile situation. Is there nothing in the much-publicised poultry master plan that caters for these difficult but predictable challenges?

Anthony Peerie
Sandringham

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