Written by FairPlay
At a FairPlay webinar last week, FairPlay founder Francois Baird noted that ambitious export targets were set in the country’s newly revised poultry master plan.
However, that had also been the case with the first master plan, signed in 2019, but since then chicken exports had declined.
What will be different this time, he asked.
Izaak Breitenbach of the SA Poultry Association (SAPA) said the country was well positioned to increase chicken exports. It was highly competitive internationally, and had increased production capacity through R2.1billion of investments in terms of the poultry master plan.
The country needed to increase chicken exports because the local market was stagnating and the big growth prospect was in exports.
Poultry aimed to replicate the success of the citrus industry, which has started small and was now the world’s largest exporter of oranges. However, while the country was ready to export chicken, and particularly cooked chicken meat, it wasn’t happening at scale at the moment.
Both Breitenbach and Gerald Walter from chicken exporting company Sovereign Foods, said that more government support was needed to open up new markets and facilitate chicken exports.
Breitenbach stressed that the poultry industry had had good responses from agriculture minister John Steenhuisen and his officials on the export problems they had raised. However, he said progress was slower than they had expected.
Breitenbach raised three issues where government support would assist chicken exports.
The first was in facilitating inspections by authorities in potential export markets of South Africa’s production facilities and state veterinary capabilities. Inspections had been done by United Kingdom officials a year ago, but their report was still awaited.
South Africa was also awaiting inspections from the European Union and Saudi Arabia. Help was needed from the departments of agriculture, of trade and industry and of international relations to move this process along.
“We really have one hurdle, and that is to get these countries to come and inspect South Africa and find that we can comply with their rigorous requirements, and therefore start our exports.”
The second issue was compartmentalisation – agreements with other countries on the size of “compartments” from which exports would be banned in the event of a bird flu outbreak.
Walter explained that the industry wanted government-to-government agreements restricting compartments to a 30-kilometer radius around affected poultry facilities, but some countries regarded South African provinces as compartments. An outbreak in one corner of a province would then result in exports being banned from the whole province.
The third issue for Breitenbach was progress on a mass vaccination campaign against bird flu. Vaccinatilon would reduce bird flu outbreaks and the number of birds infected, and this would facilitate exports.
Saying the poultry industry needed support from “all aspects of government”, Breitenbach raised the examples of Brazil, China and the United States which had government support for their poultry industries.
“We don’t get subsidised for any projects that we run. In the case of avian influenza, we do not get reimbursed in terms of the law for the chickens that we have culled.” Breitenbach said.
He welcomed the announcement by Minister Steenhuisen that more state veterinarians would be appointed. South Africa did not have sufficient vets to do the inspections required to certify chicken exports.
A solution being discussed with the agriculture department was “a form of privatisation” where functions like inspections and certification, could be done by an external assignee, such as the Food Safety Agency.
This article first appeared in the 12 June FairPlay newsletter. Find it on https://fairplaymovement.org.
Photo by Dr Muhammad Amer on Unsplash
