Amid fears that South Africa could once again look to countries like Brazil for egg imports as the current bird flu outbreak continues to cause havoc in the chicken sector, the SA Poultry Association (Sapa) recommends turning to member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Commenting on the current egg supply shortfall, sparked by the culling of about six million layer hens out of a total of 27 million, and with another three million possibly destined for destruction in efforts to contain the current strains of bird flu, Sapa has called for an African alleviation approach.
“We believe that most of the SADC countries like Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, and Malawi, which are free from avian influenza can assist the industry to fill in some of the needed supplies.
“Unfortunately in 2017 during the previous avian influenza (outbreak), we had poor, rotten eggs dumped into South Africa from South America.”
From Mozambique it has also been reported that the price of eggs in and around cities like Maputo have skyrocketed since the country decided on culling 45 000 hens imported from South Africa.
Whereas a tray of 30 eggs, called a “favo” used to cost around 230 meticais (+/- R83), the same tray now costs more than 300 meticais (R108).
As in South Africa, where a tray of 30 eggs was spotted in a retailer for R163.99, prompting consumer complaints of price gouging, Mozambique is seeing the fallout of a devastating outbreak.
Alongside its decision to destroy 45 000, about 12 000 eggs was incinerated earlier this week.
Provincial Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mariamo Luísa Pedro José, told Portuguese news service Lusa: “We are not too worried about the drop [in] production. What we really fear is the rise in prices.”
