We have an armchair government playing catch 22. Case in point: South Africa has a bird flu policy, if only the government would follow it. Instead, bird flu policy is running on empty promises and complications. Its policies require chicken farmers to follow policy, but government makes it almost impossible to apply the policy and then chicken farmers, particularly small farmers, get punished because the policy is not being followed.
Key takeaways:
- Uncompensated culling sabotages disease control: The government’s failure to pay farmers for culled birds financially ruins producers and discourages outbreak reporting, causing bird flu to spread faster.
- Complex vaccination rules leave farmers defenseless: Overly complicated regulations prevent poultry producers from actually accessing bird flu vaccines, leaving them unprotected against the next outbreak.
- Policy inaction hurts consumers and producers: Failing to implement announced initiatives, like VAT-free chicken and farmer relief, dooms small businesses and drives up food costs for poor households.
The Animal Diseases Act is clear about dealing with bird flu; when government orders a farmer to kill healthy birds to stop a disease, the state must pay. The courts settled this long ago. In the Bluelilliesbush case the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that culling compensation must reflect the full value of the animals, not a scrap value at the abattoir door. The reasoning was that government cannot ask farmers to cooperate in their own ruin and expect them to keep cooperating.
Compensation is the price of a working disease-control system.
In a similar judgment, the High Court ordered the government to compensate for culled chickens based on market value. The government has appealed against that ruling.
When avian influenza tore through the industry in 2023, and farmers culled more than nine million birds on official instruction, government paid nothing. The Department of Agriculture told Parliament it had no money. This means that the policy applies to chicken farmers but not to government.
The same crazy catch 22 runs through everything.
Vaccination is an essential tool in bird flu prevention, and will reduce the need for culling. The World Organisation for Animal Health says so plainly and the SA government even published vaccination guidelines in November 2023. But it wrote such complicated rules that for eighteen months not a single producer tried to meet them. The first permit came only in mid-2025, for one farm, for five percent of one company’s breeding stock.
This vaccination policy is a ghost; most chicken farmers heard about it but have not seen it. Cattle farmers also discovered this during the current Foot and Mouth outbreak Meanwhile, the next bird flu outbreak is on the way.
VAT-free chicken is the same story. Government promised to scrap VAT on chicken. The industry submission showed that scrapping value added tax on those pieces that poor households buy will cost a rounding error against total VAT taxes. Treasury was to decide by February 2025, but the industry has had to ask again for the 2026 Budget. Nothing. Meanwhile 28,8% of South Africa’s children are stunted because of malnutrition
There is agreement about what must be done, it is just not being done.
This is the pattern; policies are announced with confidence, then left to gather dust. The consequences of armchair governance affect us all.
Meanwhile the next bird flu outbreak is coming on the wings of wild birds that recognise no border and no budget cycle. When it arrives chicken farmers will face its devastation twice. Once from the virus. And once from their own government.
Farmers who report an outbreak know the state will order a cull, but not compensate. So the temptation, for the desperate, is not to report, or hide it and quietly move birds. Then disease spreads faster, not slower. Every veterinarian knows that compensation is what buys honesty. Remove it, and the disease breaks badly.
But a farmer who wants to vaccinate and so avoid the cull, cannot. The rules are too complicated and too expensive to implement. So, the small producer, unable to absorb a wipe-out, but who supplies the township spaza and the rural school feeding scheme has neither the vaccine to prevent the loss nor money to survive culling. And concentration, the very thing the Competition Commission claims to worry about, deepens with each outbreak small farmers cannot survive.
A consumer who relies on chicken as the only affordable protein pays more every time a flock is destroyed and not replaced. Government’s failures wipe the plates of poor people; by not paying for culling, disenabling vaccination, collecting VAT on all chicken.
This is the cruelty of armchair government. It appears like action with press statements and gazettes. But actual inaction leaves farmers exposed, small producers doomed, and consumers to carry the cost. Unimplemented policies are worse than none, because it leaves government comfortably dozing in their armchairs while lonely farmers vainly struggle on.
FairPlay has said before that government’s first duty is to do no harm. Government’s promises are causing harm through what it fails to do.
We call on government to govern according to its laws and policies. Pay for culling, as the law already requires and the courts have already ordered. Make vaccination workable for every poultry producer, including small farmers.
Implement VAT-free chicken before another budget passes by. Implement your commitments in the Master Plan you signed. Tighten anti-dumping and end the costly, unnecessary Competition Commission enquiry that punishes an industry still recovering from the 2023 bird flu disaster.
Implementing policies is more affordable than inaction. The law is settled. The science is clear. What is missing is action: for government to do what it has already said it will do.
Outgoing Agriculture minister John Steenhuisen promised legislative changes that will make vaccination against bird flu easier, including for small-scale farmers. The devil will be in the detail of that legislation, including whether it revises onerous requirements and makes vaccination practical and affordable. Without that, there will be no mass vaccination programme.
The next bird outbreak will test whether the government that writes policy has summoned the energy for actual implementation.
FairPlay calls on the South African government to pass the exam by recompensing losses for chicken culling, ensuring vaccination with simplified rules and helping poor households by implementing VAT-free chicken.
