South Africa has an important choice to make about the future of its poultry industry.
The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) has applied for the continuation and increase of anti-dumping duties on frozen bone-in chicken portions from Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Importantly, these anti-dumping duties are imposed on top of the ordinary customs tariffs of 62% already applied to frozen bone-in chicken, adding a further layer of protection to the domestic market. AMIE will oppose the application in its response to the sunset review.
This is bigger than another disagreement between local poultry producers and importers. The real question is what kind of poultry industry South Africa wants to build: one that grows by becoming more productive, competitive and export-oriented, or one increasingly reliant on protection from competition at home?
Anti-dumping measures have a legitimate place in international trade. Where dumping is established and causes material injury, countries are entitled to act. But these measures were never intended to become permanent industrial policy.
That is precisely why WTO rules contain a sunset mechanism. Anti-dumping duties should ordinarily terminate after five years unless a review establishes that their expiry would likely result in the continuation or recurrence of both dumping and injury. The WTO has described termination as the rule, with continuation an exception that must be justified in an entirely new investigation.
This matters in the current case. SAPA’s application records only 471,784kg of subject imports in 2025, while SARS records no imports from Germany or the UK. Yet SAPA forecasts that, without the duties, imports from the three countries would rise to almost 108.6 million kilograms. Based on abstract assumptions supposes that imports would return to their 2014 levels, the final full year before the duties were imposed.
And because there were no German imports into South Africa in 2025 from which to establish a current export price, SAPA instead relies on German exports to Ghana. When evidence from a third-country market, with different economic conditions, exchange rates and geography, is used to support both the continuation and increase of protection in South Africa, the assumptions underpinning that comparison warrants careful scrutiny.
The fact that a trade barrier has successfully suppressed trade cannot become the reason for retaining that barrier indefinitely.
There is an even wider issue. The Competition Commission’s own Poultry Market Inquiry raises fundamental questions about whether the current structure of the domestic market is delivering the competitiveness, transformation and consumer outcomes South Africa needs.
The Competition Commission notes that the broiler industry continues to seek protection through tariffs and anti-dumping duties, while warning that these measures can negatively affect consumers, particularly lower-income households that rely heavily on chicken for protein. It also states explicitly that domestic production does not produce enough chicken to meet consumption and that imports therefore play a critical role.
That is the balance South African trade policy too often loses. Imports are not the enemy of domestic production. They supplement local supply, fill gaps where demand exceeds domestic production, and provide particular products such as mechanically deboned meat that are not produced locally in sufficient quantities. Import competition also plays an important role in motivating domestic producers to invest and become more competitive themselves. AMIE made precisely this case in its submission to the Poultry Market Inquiry.
Competition matters because protection is not costless. Research supported by the South African Reserve Bank estimated a tariff pass-through rate of 0.477 for frozen chicken: broadly, a 10% tariff-driven increase in the import price was associated with an approximately 4.8% increase in the retail price. The same research estimated that tariff increases, anti-dumping duties and safeguards increased frozen-chicken consumer prices by 16.2% between 2012 and 2021. The welfare impact was substantially greater for poorer households, which spend a larger proportion of their income on food.
That wider consumer impact is important. South Africa’s current anti-dumping framework does not expressly provide for a public-interest test, but ITAC is now proposing amendments that would bring broader public-interest considerations into the process. That is entirely consistent with ITAC’s own mandate: not simply to administer trade remedies, but to foster economic growth, raise incomes and promote investment and employment.
The direction is clear: barriers to trade carry real economic costs. We must stop pretending otherwise. Nor should greater protection be considered in isolation from the structure of the domestic market itself.
The Competition Commission describes a poultry value chain that is highly concentrated and vertically integrated. The four largest chicken producers account for nearly 63% of South African production. It further notes that, despite industrial-policy interventions and active trade policies, the industry’s structure has not materially changed: the market shares of the largest producers have grown while imports have declined.
The Competition Commission has specifically undertaken to examine international competitiveness, the effect of imports on producers and consumers, barriers to entry, vertical integration and the role of large producers as gatekeepers within the value chain.
Those issues now need to be taken through to a conclusion. The Commission’s public Poultry Market Inquiry page currently contains the draft and final Terms of Reference, but no published findings. Given the policy decisions now confronting the sector, this work is increasingly urgent.
There is also a broader economic contradiction South Africa needs to resolve.
Only weeks ago, government and business launched Phase 3 of the Government Business Partnership. Agriculture and agro-processing have been specifically identified as sectors capable of attracting investment, earning foreign revenue and creating employment. President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for competitive agro-processing value chains and greater exports of processed agricultural products.
That ambition is exactly right. But an economy cannot credibly pursue export-led growth while treating international competition primarily as a threat when it reaches our own shores.
Imports and exports are not opposing economic philosophies. They are parts of the same rules-based trading system.
Exports support growth by earning foreign revenue, strengthening the current account and creating production and employment opportunities at home. Imports play the other side of that equation: by exposing domestic firms to competition, they encourage efficiency, innovation and the global competitiveness that successful exporting ultimately depends on.
South Africa should absolutely support a strong and expanding domestic poultry industry. We should improve biosecurity, energy, logistics, infrastructure and veterinary capacity; open new export markets; support emerging farmers; and remedy unfair trade within a reasonable and temporary timeframe.
What we should not do is depend on protection to create competitiveness.
Trade remedies should address specific unfair trade practices. They should not be permanent, nor become a substitute for fixing structural weaknesses, improving productivity or competing for markets.
As ITAC considers this sunset review, and as the Competition Commission examines the poultry market, the test should therefore be broader than whether domestic producers would prefer protection to continue.
The test should be whether our policies are building an industry capable of standing on its own feet, exporting to the world and supplying South African consumers with sufficient, affordable protein.
Protection may sometimes provide breathing space. It cannot be the growth strategy.
Written by Paul Matthew, CEO of the Association of Meat Importers and Exporters (AMIE)