Leather and feathers performing well, but raw meat export ban still a dark cloud

Ostrich fashion feathers are enjoying a sustained period of popularity.

Oudtshoorn, W. Cape, SA – The link between farm and tannery seems much closer in SA’s ostrich industry than it does with bovine leather, so SA Ostrich Business Chamber (SAOBC) CEO Piet Kleyn was speaking from the heart when he said this month that “the best news we have is that we’ve had some wonderful rain in the producer areas”.

The industry has also been benefitting from a strong showing by ostrich leather in European fashion houses and in the US and Mexican cowboy boot market.

“The feather side is also going very, very well,” he said, “both on the fashion and industrial sides. “Leather and feathers are carrying us through the ban on the export to the European Union of raw ostrich meat.”

There has been an intermittent ban by the EU – almost the entire market for raw ostrich meat – for more than half of the past 14 years, caused by outbreaks of Avian Influenza (AI). It’s a worry for the ostrich industry because the popularity of ostrich leather and ostrich fashion feathers is fashion-driven and cyclical.

The industry has put in place a comprehensive set of protocols for dealing with AI, but the EU regulations ban the export of meat from farms surrounding a farm where AI has been detected, whether it is low- or high pathogenic, and most farms are in the relatively small Klein Karoo. A farm in Gauteng, which was ruled as ‘a closed ratite holding’, and which was therefore allowed to export, has had the loophole closed.

“It’s the same old situation,” he said. “We can and still are exporting heat-treated meat, but that’s a much smaller and less profitable business.

“Via the government, we have been and continue to negotiate with trading partners. We’re only asking that we be treated the same as everyone else.

“For the long-term future of the industry, we need to resume raw ostrich meat exports in a sustainable way.”