The bird flu outbreak in South Africa appears to have peaked at last, and poultry producers believe they will be able to supply nearly all of the demand for chicken for the rest of the year, including the Christmas and New Year peaks.
The danger is far from over – new infections are occurring, but at a much-reduced rate. The warmer summer months may bring a welcome respite to poultry producers who have endured the worst bird flu outbreak since the disease first struck in 2017.
Izaak Breitenbach of the SA Poultry Association told the FairPlay Bulletin that there would still be a small shortage in local supply in November and December, but there was no need for panic buying.
He said the reduced number of bird flu infections, the release of chicken from stocks that producers had built up and the importing of 46 million hatching eggs “will probably eliminate most of the shortage”.
This is the message Breitenbach will be delivering to a meeting on Friday of a parliamentary portfolio committee that is examining the bird flu outbreak and its implications.
Hatching eggs provide producers with the day-old chicks that start the production process. They are flown in and so arrive quickly, unlike imports of frozen chicken meat which can take six to eight weeks to arrive by sea.
Breitenbach said indications were that bird flu infections had peaked in September. There had been only two new outbreaks last week, and two the week before.
“It has definitely tailed off,” he said.
After the year-end peak in chicken consumption, there is usually a drop in demand from January, giving producers further time to recover from the ravages of this year’s bird flu outbreak.
So far this year, more than 7.5 million chickens have been culled in order to “stamp out” the disease and prevent it spreading. Of these, more than 5 million were layer hens that produce table eggs, and 2.5 million breeder birds that produce the hatching eggs and day-old chicks.
