Load-shedding might result in a chicken shortage

Following a warning from the poultry industry, stage 6 load-shedding is having a huge impact on the industry.

The South African Poultry Association (Sapa), said that in the past six weeks, it had to reduce the number of chickens it slaughtered because of its backlog caused by extended power cuts. This backlog may result in a chicken shortage across the country.

PICTURE: Pixabay

They added that 10 million chicks were culled in the past few weeks.

Izaak Breytenbach the association's general manager, said that having over six hours of power outages at a time affected total output.

"We’ve got a limited amount of time over the weekend to slaughter the stock that wasn’t slaughtered, and planned to be slaughtered during the week, but when we get to stage 6 load shedding, then we simply can’t cope anymore and we fall behind, and then we see what we’ve seen with KFC: a shortage of chicken."

As franchises, such as KFC, struggle with chicken supply as a result of load shedding, SAPA said that this could also affect the retail sector.

Done by: Thaakiera Ackerdien