"South Africa poultry group calls for probe of forced labor in Brazil", 11 Dec 2017

The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) said it had asked its government to seek “urgent comment” after a report said thousands of workers in Brazil’s meat and poultry sectors were victims of forced labor and inhumane work conditions. The report by the Washington-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), released last month to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said slave labor in Brazil’s poultry sector is “endemic”...“Thousands of South African workers have lost their jobs because of dumped chicken imports from countries including Brazil, which has now been exposed as a country where workers are subject to degrading working conditions and forced labor,” SAPA said in a statement...The poultry business in South Africa has been fighting against competition from producers in Brazil, the European Union and the United States for several years. Domestic producers have long complained about cheap imports from overseas companies of chicken portions still on the bone, popular locally but generally less favored by consumers in the United States and Europe...Brazilian poultry companies have denied all allegations of using forced labor. Brazil’s BRF, one of the world’s largest poultry exporters, said in a recent statement that it “does not tolerate and strongly condemns all forms of work in degrading conditions and incompatible with human dignity, such as exhausting working days, forced labor and debt bondage”.