EU worried over growth hormones in SA chicken

Johannesburg – EU counsellor for trade and economics Dessislava

Choumelova has expressed concern over SA’s chickens.

Choumelova was briefing the portfolio committee on trade

and industry at Parliament on Tuesday.

Choumelova said there are serious concerns about South

Africa’s ability to monitor the use of prohibited medicines and growth hormones

in poultry and other animal species.

On Wednesday, the South African Poultry Association

(SAPA) said South African broiler producers have long committed to provide safe

and high quality foods that promote human and animal wellbeing.

“We are committed to the three pillars of sustainability

being food security, a self-sufficient society and to the balance of nature,”

the association says.

It explains, producers therefore subscribe its SAPA’s

Code of Conduct.

“There are no growth hormones available for use in

poultry anywhere in the world and therefore also not in South Africa. No growth

hormones are registered under any of the two main statutory bodies governing

stock remedies … for use in poultry production – neither orally, nor through

injection routes.”

As a result, SAPA says, no one can use hormones in

poultry in South Africa and no one does.

“The allegations by the EU seem designed to cast false

aspersions as to the practices of local producers. In any event, most of the

medicines we do use were developed in the EU or the US and are merely

registered in South Africa. What the EU uses is generally what we use.”

SAPA adds advances in the growth performance of the

modern broiler chicken have been achieved through the genetic selection of

superior poultry stock coupled to advances in animal nutrition aimed at optimising

the performance of the birds.

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There has been a 50 percent improvement in feed use

efficiency and a 400 percent increase in growth rate over the last 60 years in

broilers, it says.

Bird management practices such as sanitation, lighting,

ventilation, temperature, space and water have also been aligned with modern

genetics and farming methods, and together with veterinary approved vaccines

and poultry health medication, bird welfare and growth rates are optimised without

the use of growth hormones, it asserts.

“We are a better producer than most EU countries and a

cheaper producer than all of them. Perhaps that is why they wish to deflect

from the truth.”

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