Critical South African industry is taking the government to court

The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) has filed a court case against the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) in its battle against chicken import dumping.

The case refers specifically to concessions granted by the DTIC to chicken products imported from the United States of America.

Per a 2015 trade agreement, the United States is allowed to export over 72,000 tonnes of frozen chicken to South Africa without paying anti-dumping duties.

This was agreed upon as a reciprocal concession to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a United States trade agreement which gives South Africa and other African nations duty-free access to the US market.

SAPA called on the DTIC to discard the 2015 agreement after US President Donald Trump imposed heavy tariffs on US imports from numerous countries at the beginning of 2025, including South Africa.

A clause of the 2015 agreement stated that if any benefit to South Africa is lost in terms of its trade dealings with the US, the agreement can be legally withdrawn.

SAPA Broiler Organisation CEO Izaak Breitenbach said these tariffs constituted a significant loss of trade benefits between South Africa and the US, and as such, the 2015 agreement should be scrapped.

“President Trump implemented a 15% tariff for 150 days on South African products exported to the US,” Breitenbach said. “That means that this rebate should now expire, but it is still in place. And that is the issue.”

According to Breitenbach, the DTIC explicitly conceded to the United States that it would retain the rebate on chicken imports in spite of the legal clause calling for its withdrawal.

After numerous attempts to negotiate the issue with the DTIC, SAPA said it now had no choice but to raise the issue to the South African courts.

“We believe we’ve got a very strong case,” Breitenbach said. “What we’ve learned is that the Minister of Trade and Industry has not filed his papers in time for the court case to proceed.”

“So the court case can go ahead unopposed in June this year, although we believe that government will react to our court case. But we have presented a very strong case that the rebate should not continue.”

Poultry industry retains rapid growth

Poultry remains the largest contributor to South Africa’s agricultural sector, encompassing an estimated 19.1% of the country’s total agricultural gross value.

In a recent industry report, SAPA valued the country’s poultry industry at over R74 billion and said it supported more than 110,000 jobs as of 8 May 2026.

A 2025 study by Wageningen University found South Africa’s poultry industry to be more globally competitive than those of the United States and the European Union.

The country’s chicken meat exports also grew by an estimated 9% between 2019 and 2025 across fresh, frozen and processed chicken products.

Despite this growth and demand for local chicken products, Breitenbach told 702 that imports from America still have a sizable impact on the local poultry industry.

“The biggest poultry producer in America slaughters 45 million birds a week,” Breitenbach said. “The whole South African industry only slaughters 23 million birds a week.”

“So you can see the massive amount of power they have in sending dumped products. Products with anti-dumping duties, we can compete with. But that’s a threat to us.”

While Breitenbach said he understood the DTIC’s hesitancy to further sour trade relations with the US, he stressed that South African poultry producers received no benefit from the rebate.

He also highlighted a slight shift in chicken consumption trends between both the US and South Africa, and how this could change the dynamics surrounding the current trade arrangements.

Where American consumers reportedly prefer chicken breast meat, South African consumers tend to prefer chicken on the bone, which makes the country an ideal market for US bone-in chicken exports.

Over the past few years, however, fast food outlets in South Africa have begun to sell more products which utilise the chicken breast, while bone-in consumption in America has also increased slightly.

Breitenbach said these shifting trends are still slow going, however, and that attempting to capitalise on this would not be the best solution for the local poultry industry moving forward.

“We need to export more cooked breast meat,” Breitenbach said. “That will increase the average value of the carcass that we will earn, and we will be even more cost-effective in our production processes.”