“Transformation should not be secondary, but we have a crisis on our hands. With every passing [day], Rainbow Chicken is losing R1 million [per day], and people are losing their jobs,” said the union’s general secretary, Katishi Masemola.
Masemola recently briefed Parliament’s portfolio committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on the challenges facing the local poultry industry.
He told the committee that unfair trade, namely the EU’s ‘dumping’ of large volumes of chicken in the country, was responsible for the challenges currently facing the industry.
According to Masemola, thousands of people had already lost their jobs, and more were to follow.
“If nothing [is] done about this crisis, the industry [will] shrink by half,” Masemola told Farmer’s Weekly. “If we are going to be side-tracked by the talk of transformation, there might not be a chicken industry to talk about by the time it [transformation] is finished.”
“If we are going to be side-tracked by the talk of transformation, there might not be a chicken industry to talk about by the time it [transformation] is finished.”
Masemola also urged South Africa to engage in a ‘trade war’ with the EU, and said that government needed to implement a ‘tit-for-tat’ policy against the EU in order to protect the sector.
