Speaking at a news conference at Nampo, US-based South African business person and philanthropist, Francois Baird, founder of the FairPlay movement, said he aimed to put an immediate stop to the dumping of frozen chicken portions in South Africa at below production costs.
EU chicken being dumped in South Africa was “causing material damage to a key agricultural industry,” Baird said. “It is both illegal and immoral.
FairPlay wants to make chicken dumping a toxic topic. We want to establish it as an undesirable practice in the international arena.”
Jannie de Villiers, CEO of Grain SA, said that it was vital that the local poultry and grain markets developed in such a way as to ensure mutual beneficiation.
The poultry industry was one of the major consumers in the local grain industry. “Dumping and the decrease in the local poultry industry obviously also harm the grain industry,” said De Villiers.
According to Astral Foods CEO, Chris Schutte,the high unemployment rate was one of the most pressing problems in the country.
He said that the “dramatic demise” of the poultry industry and the resulting losses of thousands of job opportunities affected everybody in South Africa.
Illegally dumped chicken equated to 45% of the local production in the past six months up to the end of March, Schutte added.
Baird said the irony was that the people who had lost their jobs and livelihoods, and thus their ability to care for their families because of dumping, could not even afford the cheap, dumped chicken that had caused them to lose their jobs in the first place.
“FairPlay will continue lobbying for an immediate stop to any further dumping offrozen chicken portions at below production costs,” he said. “The issue here is quite simple: even a little bit of dumping is illegal, and it is irresponsible to try to minimise its effects or place the blame elsewhere.”
By Annelie Coleman
First published in Farmers Weekly on 2 June 2017
