Trade policy may seem an abstract affair, but in South Africa it manifests in children’s bodies.
28.8% of children under five are stunted, including the roughly 1.7 million young lives already marked by chronic undernutrition.
The connection between protein policy and child development is not theoretical; it is nutritional science!
Chicken is the most affordable source of animal protein in South Africa. When production expands, prices stabilise and access widens. When imports dominate, the opposite occurs.
The May 2025 ban on Brazilian imports following avian influenza was a grim case study: offal and mechanically deboned meat doubled in price within weeks, potentially cutting protein from the diets of the poor and from school feeding menus.
The implications extend beyond hunger. Stunted children suffer lifelong cognitive impairment, reduced productivity and weaker immunity. South Africa loses an estimated US $1.1 billion annually in GDP from micronutrient deficiencies alone.
Within SADC, the situation is worse: one in three children is stunted, and over 40 million people face chronic food insecurity each year. Poultry should be part of the solution; it’s efficient to produce, easy to distribute, rich in essential nutrients, yet regional production lags while imports soar.
SA knows how to produce poultry efficiently; it can be farmed year- round and scaled to meet rising population demand (some capacity is currently laying idle). This has made chicken the anchor of affordable nutrition in a country where economic pressures continue to squeeze household budgets. Removing the 15% value added tax (VAT) would make it even more affordable.
South Africa should be the regional anchor for food security, supplying neighbours through initiatives such as the Southern Africa Poultry Initiative. Instead, its own dependency on imports undermines that role.
A country that imports 20% – 25% of its staple protein cannot credibly champion regional self-sufficiency. This was highlighted by the 2023 bird flu outbreaks, and load-shedding; these shocks rippled through the entire food chain, including neighbouring countries who depend on South African poultry who also felt the squeeze. When local production slows, these regional markets experience immediate shortages.
Ensuring the resilience of our poultry sector strengthens regional stability and trade, a critical element of long- term African food security.
The developmental timeline of a child born in 2025 mirrors the policy horizon of this special report. By 2035, that child will be ten years old. Whether they thrive or struggle will depend, in part, on whether South
Africa has built local capacity or outsourced its food security. The 72 000-tonne U.S. quota and the 325 000 tonnes imported from Brazil are not mere statistics, this is protein that could have nourished South African children but instead sustained foreign farmers.
The moral of the story is uncomfortable but clear: trade policy is child-nutrition policy. One cannot claim to fight poverty while undermining the industries that feed the poor.
