SA Poultry Industry Playing Foul, Says EU

Marcus Cornaro, the EU ambassador to South Africa, claims that the local poultry industry is struggling as a result of its own doing. But Kevin Lovell, CEO of the SA Poultry Association, says Cornaro has got his facts wrong.

- Peter Fabricius

South Africa’s ailing poultry industry is scapegoating EU chicken imports when in fact most of its problems are domestic, EU ambassador to South Africa, Marcus Cornaro, claimed at the end of January.

He was responding to complaints from the local industry that EU imports are destroying their business. In response, the South African government slapped a “safeguard” import duty of 13.9% on frozen “bone-in” EU chicken parts (legs and wings) in December last year.

This was on top of steep anti-dumping duties which the government had already imposed on chicken imports in 2015; 73% on German chickens, 30% on UK and 22% on Dutch chicken imports.

Yet, EU chicken imports accounted for only 7% of total South African chicken consumption and about 14% of consumption of brown chicken meat, Cornaro said. Since those figures were recorded, the South African government had taken the “radical” measure of banning all poultry imports from seven EU countries because of outbreaks in those countries of highly-pathogenic avian flu (AI). This was projected to reduce EU chicken imports by about two-thirds.

“So it is hard to see how the impact of EU imports could be so dramatic,” he said at a media briefing in Johannesburg, adding that the local poultry industry was using the EU as a “scapegoat” for its own problems. He said he thought the local industry had targeted the EU for blame because it was a high-profile, easy target – especially just after the EU-SADC Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) had just come into force.

Despite all these protective measures, the local poultry industry has demanded further import tariffs on EU poultry imports. It is not clear yet how the government will respond.