FairPlay has had a very active first nine years, and we are looking at an even more active 10th year as we head into 2026.
The FairPlay focus is on predatory trade, on the people and communities prejudiced by unfair and illegal trade. Over the past decade, this has led to several often- interlinked campaigns, fighting, as always, for the principles on which we were founded in 2016 – standing on the side of the people to fight against the pernicious effects of predatory trade.
We began by fighting against dumped chicken imports from the European Union, and the damage done to the local poultry industry and local jobs.
This campaign later included the United States and Brazil. FairPlay was similarly involved in supporting the sugar industry’s fight against dumped imports, which also cost thousands of jobs in poor rural communities.
Ten years later, trade dominates again because of the tariffs imposed by the United States government, and South Africa’s often misguided response.
Dumping is predatory trade which does more than impact local industries and their workers.
Chicken dumping also impacts South Africa’s food security and national health, by reducing the ability of local poultry producers to continue feeding the nation with a reliable supply of affordable chicken. There is a direct link with child stunting, which went from affecting 27% of children under five in 2017 to 28.8% now. Child stunting is a national disaster and should be declared an emergency.
Affordability, food security and child stunting, in turn, led to our years-long campaign for VAT-free chicken – the removal of South Africa’s 15% value added tax (VAT) from the chicken portions most consumed by low- income households.
It was a combination of these issues that kept FairPlay busy in 2025.
In April, when the new administration in Washington DC started imposing tariffs on nearly every country in the world, it opened a new attack on the poultry industry in SA.
These tariffs nullified the preferential access to US markets enjoyed by many South African industries, including automotive manufacturers and agricultural producers. It also led to frantic South African efforts to negotiate a tariff deal where US rates are lower than 30%.
In a repeat of what happened in
2015, the South African government decided to sacrifice South Africa’s poultry industry in order to secure advantages for other parts of the economy. In 2015, as a condition of renewing the country’s benefits under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), South Africa agreed to
a huge annual quota of dumped US chicken free of the anti-dumping duties which should apply.
Now, when that quota has risen
to 72,000 tonnes annually, the government has offered the quota as part of the trade negotiations with the US, seemingly in perpetuity and not tied to AGOA, which has expired and
may or may not be renewed. Worse, the government may be pressured into lowering or lifting general tariffs on other US chicken imports.
FairPlay has repeatedly pointed out the unfairness and risk of these arrangements. The poultry industry was not even invited to discussions about which its livelihood may be at stake.
The US threat is not an immediate one, because bird flu outbreaks have reduced a former flood of US imports down to a trickle in recent years. But should American get bird flu under control, the flood could resume, with huge volumes of dumped chicken and tariff-free imports threatening contraction and job losses at local producers, and the closure of many small-scale farming operations.
There are no indications that
the South African government is concerned about the huge challenges facing the poultry industry, which supplies most of the meat consumed in the country. Nor has it offered support in other areas, such as the delayed vaccination programmeagainst bird flu, compensation for bird flu cullings which the government
still refuses, and more active efforts to get meaningful volumes of chicken exported to Europe and the Middle East.
This will all be on FairPlay’s 2026 agenda, driven by a renewed effort to collaborate with government at all levels – national, provincial and local – to address the challenges facing the industry and South Africa. These include infrastructural shortcomings, deteriorating roads, water supply shortages and erratic electricity supply.
There will also be another push for VAT-free chicken, increasingly urgent because of rising food insecurity in poor communities. South Africa is food secure as a nation, but not at household level, where official surveys show the situation is worsening. Millions of poor people cannot afford a nutritious diet for themselves and their children – leading to increasing levels of malnutrition and child stunting.
After resisting the VAT-free chicken calls since 2018, the government nearly came to the party early in 2025. Its first budget proposals included a rise in VAT, for which it
would compensate by removing VAT from chicken offal. That offer went away when the VAT increase was vetoed by parliament.
VAT-free chicken should be a government priority, because of the impact of increasing joblessness, poverty and malnutrition, particularly in urban poverty, small towns and rural areas.
Chicken is the primary source of meat protein for poor communities, and they need more than cheaper chicken offal. They need VAT removed from bone-in chicken portions which contain the vitamins and minerals needed by low-income families.
South Africa’s 28.8% rate of stunting for children under five is a national disgrace. Stunting, which results frommalnutrition, affects these children physically and mentally for the rest of their lives. When malnutrition reduces the potential of more than quarter
of its children, the whole nation should be concerned, ashamed and galvanised into action.
FairPlay is committed to higher order solutions for these issues in 2026.
