Johannesburg - South Africa must defend its chicken farmers from an influx of imported dark meat from Europe or face the collapse of the local industry, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said this week.
While domestic producers must become more competitive to ensure the industry’s sustainability, their efforts would be useless unless cheap imports were stemmed, Davies said on Tuesday.
Since tariffs were removed five years ago under a trade agreement between Europe and South Africa, imports of bone-in portions, such as legs and thighs, have tripled to more than 188million kilograms last year, according to the South African Poultry Association.
“The competitiveness issues are there, we have to work around those with the industry,” Davies said.
“But they’re not going to be solved if we just allow an influx of spare parts from around the world to come in to take over the market.”
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South African producers say they are being unfairly undercut by imported bone-in portions after tariffs on chicken from Europe were removed at the start of 2012. European consumers’ preference for chicken breasts means the continent’s producers have an abundance of legs, thighs and wings that they can sell cheaply in Africa.
“We definitely have distress, there’s no doubt about it,” Davies said.
After South Africa imposed a temporary 13.9 percent duty on European imports in December, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom wrote to Davies saying that South Africa's “structural problems” were more to blame for the local poultry industry’s problems than competition from Europe.