South Africa’s egg production industry has drawn a line in the sand on switching its production method from battery cages to free-range as mobilized by global animal activists FOUR PAWS in an ongoing online campaign.
The South African Poultry Association (Sapa) yesterday said that untenable price increases and consumer sentiment would seriously devastate the sector, worth more than R20 billion, which has already been besieged by the impact of avian influenza outbreaks, load shedding, and higher feed costs.
Sapa’s CEO for egg production, Dr Abongile Balarane, said that based on a study they had commissioned the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) to do, the macroeconomic and socio-economic impacts of the cage-free layer hen system would reduce production by about 26.3%, with a significant increase in production costs.
Referring to the study, Balarane said capital expenditure for a cage system was R355 per hen compared to R461 per hen for cage-free systems, requiring a direct investment of R4.9bn to convert to a total cage-free system and the cost, spread over five years, would bring an additional cost of between R5.70 and R6.00 per dozen of eggs.
Balarane said the sector was hard-pressed with food security interventions following the loss of about 30% of the 30 million birds population in the last outbreak of the avian flu, with recovery expected to take a year longer.
He said Sapa was working on resolving problems arising from the implementation of vaccination protocols for the H7 strain of the bird flu virus to make it accessible and affordable particularly for emerging farmers.
This comes after FOUR PAWS South Africa director, Fiona Miles, charged that cruel practices within the egg production sector adversely affected not only animal welfare, but also the environment, human rights, consumer protection, and food quality and safety.
Miles said the campaign launched earlier this month to garner 1 000 signatures, with close to 700 currently recorded, would hopefully change the fate of over 95% of birds confined in battery cages smaller than an A4 size piece of paper for the duration of their productive lives.
“Chickens used for egg production are subjected to various cruel practices, including, but not limited to, confinement in battery cages, the mass culling of male chicks, beak trimming, toe removal, excessive exposure to light, and overstocking,” Miles said.
“The housing systems used in egg production, as well as stock density, have an impact on which management practices are used within an egg production facility.”
Miles said the industry had a corporate obligation to be transparent and truthful about their production methods, and to ensure that their claims are not exaggerated or otherwise misleading to consumers.
“A lack of public awareness about the harms of intensive animal agriculture might be exploited by egg producers when industry defends the housing systems they use for increased productivity and profit,” Miles said.
-IOL
