The poultry industry has cautioned that the expired African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and the rising chicken imports from the US will disadvantage local farmers and producers.

They argue that the abandoning of anti-dumping rules to allow the US to export duty free chicken into South Africa nullifies the poultry master plan.

Local producers say the impact of unfavourable trade terms are expected to adversely affect South Africa’s R72 billion poultry sector which employs over 100 000 workers.

Fairplay, the anti-dumping movement, argues that poultry dumping is an unfair trading practice which allows chicken importation at unfairly low prices that drives local producers out of business and causes job losses.

In 2015, South Africa agreed to American demands to remove anti-dumping restrictions on US chicken imports in exchange to secure broader benefits under AGOA.

CEO of the Poultry SA Association Izaak Breitenbach says the industry is being sacrificed as a bargaining tool to negotiate down the 30% US imposed tariff on South African goods.

“We have a poultry master plan that says we need to get anti-dumping duties to produce more chicken locally and import less chicken. The self-regulation that was allowed for the us and immediately implemented without any reciprocal benefit for South Africa, there are tons of chicken, up to 30 000 tons of chicken now on its way to South Africa. The second thing is that the AGOA agreement has lapsed in terms of the AGOA agreement we lost all our benefits for exports to the US.”

Chairperson of the Budget Justice Coalition, Matshidiso Lecoasa says there are clear links between food insecurity and unfair trade deals.

“When trade deals prioritise these export crops or the food crops and we can also extend this to the poultry argument. Yes, we may earn some foreign revenue but unfortunately there is still substantive hunger at home. We really see that true food security will mean building fair trade terms that also protect local producers, stabilise prices and ensure that every household can afford nutritious food and can have access to good quality poultry in this case so that we are not just exclusively looking at boosting our export numbers but what do these export numbers mean for ordinary South Africans.”

Ayanda Ngxumeshe of Tshwane University of Technology says South Africa must consider the trade-offs carefully as the US is using chicken dumping to negotiate the renewal of AGOA which expired last month.

“AGOA is immensely valuable to South Africa, we need to agree to a certain degree here because it gives our wine, citrus, macadamia duty free access to the US market therefore losing the AGOA deal may cost us significantly. However, the danger is that poultry becomes a bargaining chip here, if we concede too much here, we could sacrifice an entire domestic value chain.”

Fairplay defines poultry dumping is an unfair trading practice which allows chicken importation at unfairly low or cost-level prices that drives local producers out of business and causes job losses.