South Africa’s poultry producers will be pleased with the continued decline in imports of the bone-in chicken portions which caused a crisis in previous years.
Bone-in portions are the brown meat cuts (leg quarters, drumsticks, thighs and wings) that were dumped in massive volumes in the years to 2018, leading to contraction and job losses in the local poultry industry.
Since then, South Africa has secured anti-dumping duties against nine producer countries, and all of them except Brazil have also been affected by bird flu outbreaks. The combined effect has been that imports of bone-in portions dropped from 287 000 tonnes in 2018 to 71 000 tonnes last year.
The steep decline has continued this year. Official import statistics for August 2024 show that bone-in imports for the first eight months of the year are nearly 40% below the same period in the previous year.
Volumes from the United States are currently negligible. The US was until recently the primary source of bone-in imports because of the duty-free quota it forced on South Africa in 2016 as a condition of continuing the country’s Agoa trade benefits. Now South Africa bans chicken imports from 31 US states because of bird flu.
The test will come when US and EU producers recover from bird flu outbreaks. Bird flu bans have so far been lifted from four EU countries, and others say they are bird flu free. Volumes are tiny compared to previous years, but they are growing. The respite may not last.
While bone-in import volumes are dropping, producers have been concerned at the rising totals for offal and mechanically deboned meat (MDM). Both have been high all year and offal is heading for its highest total since 2018.
These are the two largest import categories. In August, MDM – a paste used in the production of processed meats such as polony – made up 62% of South Africa’s chicken imports. Offal (chicken heads, feet, livers etc) accounted for a further 26%.
