ChickenFacts has consistently tried to highlight other voices and bring other opinions and debates to the public attention.

Identify and Verify Claims

We try to identify and verify claims made by roleplayers in the poultry industry, and one of the most persistent voices in the industry is the South African Poultry Association (SAPA) and their mouthpiece FairPlay.

 Poultry producers big and small contribute enormously to our economy and the wellbeing of our people by producing the chicken we eat – chicken is, after all, South Africa’s favourite protein and a mainstay of the average food basket.

Five Enormous Companies Dominate

But it is also an industry that has a highly unusual structure:  almost three-quarters of our production comes from five enormous companies that dominate the industry and control the information around the industry.

 These five companies persistently call for protection against healthy competition.

 Therefore we feel compelled to challenge the latest press release from SAPA, in which a number of statements are made that we have already investigated and found to be, let us say, disingenuous.

 The latest press release from SAPA claims that ‘negative impacts’ can already  be felt because tariffs have not been renewed.  But there is no indication what these ‘negative impacts’ are.

 SAPA paints a doomsday scenario of the complete collapse of the local poultry industry if punitive tariffs are not introduced, but does not give any detail.  This is a severe case of scare-mongering in order to support the call for protectionism.

No Evidence of Shortages

 We have been unable to find any evidence of shortages, over-supply, unusual price increases that cannot be attributed to the fuel price or the exchange rate, or any other threats to the industry.

 We therefore ask SAPA to be more specific about the ‘negative impacts’ that they claim they are already measuring.