The poultry sector is in recovery

But the health of the sector depends on how well it contains future avian influenza outbreaks

- Aarti Bhana

South Africa’s poultry sector is recovering from a devastating outbreak of bird flu and has capacity to meet local consumer demand — as long as inoculations for avian influenza continue.

The department of agriculture rolled out mass inoculations earlier this month to protect the industry from highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks.

In 2023, millions of birds had to be culled, hampering production and driving up poultry and egg prices.

The inoculation campaign kicked off with the vaccination of 200 000 broiler breeders at poultry producer Astral. The birds represent 5% of the company's total breeding stock, the department said.

Industry experts have welcomed the inoculation drive.

"We had two cases of HPAI in the country, but both were contained and did not spread with minimum losses in terms of production," said Izaak Breitenbach, the chief executive of the South African Poultry Association. “We still have an additional one million birds per week slaughter capacity. We currently slaughter about 21.5 million birds per week.”