The South African Poultry Association CEO, Abongile Balarane says that 30% of the industry’s egg laying chickens have been wiped out. The association appeared before Parliament’s Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Committee, to give an update on the
“If we could fast-track the importation of liquid or powder eggs saying to government to fast-track opening border countries like Namibians. If I could choose as a consumer, I would rather have an egg coming from Namibia than South America.” “We are sitting at 7.5 million, it includes both layers and the broilers but on broilers side it’s the broiler breeders. Over the years the number of birds we’ve lost is over 13 million birds.”as the country is battling a huge outbreak of avian influenza among chickens. Producers are battling financially because there is no compensation for those who cull their produce.
“We as government, we simply don’t have funds to compensate. We know culling would take some of them out of business. It’s just one of those unfortunate things that we can’t afford even if we want to.”shortage of poultry productsSAPA’s general manager, Izaak Breitenbach says there is sufficient stock and there should not be a need to import from countries like Brazil.