Durban — South Africa’s favourite bird will make it onto the menu this Christmas after all, after an avian flu epidemic decimated the poultry industry and led to widespread chicken and egg shortages this year.
The Department of Agriculture’s Reggie Ngcobo said the H7N6 strain of avian flu which had caused havoc had “died down” and no new cases had been reported of late.
He said the imports they had managed to procure ensured there were enough supplies of poultry products and farmers were now working hard to rebuild their stock.
“You can see even in the stores the names of the eggs are no longer foreign to us, it is eggs that we know.
“We have enough stock and, hopefully, by the end of January the industry will be at 70% in terms of recovery,” said Ngcobo.
He said this also meant imports would decline.
“We cannot say we are completely out of the woods, we think we are fine, but tomorrow we might find that someone might open their stock only to find that it (avian flu) is there,” Ngcobo said.
Last month the South African Poultry Association (Sapa) said that 8.5-million chickens had to be culled to curb the spread of the H7 and H5 bird flu strains. It said this included at least 2.5-million broiler breeder chickens and about 6 million of SA’s layer flock.
Before the disease spread like wildfire, farmers were already taking strain because of the high price of feed, escalating fuel prices and electricity constraints.
Independent on Saturday