Intensive Poultry: Broilers

The focus of the commercial poultry industry is the production of meat and eggs under intensive husbandry, largely from chickens. Broiler chickens are reared to provide chicken meat. Chicken meat production has changed from being a byproduct of the egg industry to an industry in its own right. The egg component includes production of eggs that are either marketed in the shell, bulk processed, or sold as value-added products. The poultry industry is the largest (in terms of animal numbers) and the most highly automated, vertically integrated, and intensified of the animal production industries.

The High Productivity of Poultry The Global Importance of Poultry and Pig Meat Alternative Production Systems Concerns over Growth of Intensive Systems Use of Cereals in Poultry Feeds Summary References and Further Reading

The High Productivity of Poultry

Pig and poultry production is not only more intensive than ruminant meat production, in its use of land, productivity is also greater because of higher reproduction and growth rates. Comparative productivity of the different livestock species, derived from FAO statistics, are presented in Figure 1. Production is measured by the number of animals/birds slaughtered in 2000 plus the increase, or minus the decrease, in animal/bird population between 2000 and 2001. This adjustment for changes in population is a crude method of allowing for stock depreciation or appreciation. Productivity is then estimated by the number slaughtered as a percentage of the population recorded in 2000.

The Global Importance of Poultry and Pig Meat

Alternative Production Systems

Small-scale backyard poultry and pig systems are common in many parts of the world. There is scope for intensification and a change to more "open" systems with the introduction of housing, the purchase of concentrate feeds and the sale of produce. Increases in scale and capital investment allow improved housing, mechanization and automation of feeding, watering and husbandry, the introduction of exotic breeds, specially formulated concentrate feeds and veterinary drugs. Production of poultry and pigs in the developed countries is concentrated in large-scale commercial units and their application is spreading in peri-urban areas of the developing world, particularly in Asia and Latin America.

The importance of landless poultry and pig systems in meeting growing demands for livestock products in human diets, and some of the reasons for their importance were discussed above. However, there are three potential areas for concern over the growing importance of such systems.

	First, there may be few advantages to the rural poor. The main beneficiaries of intensive systems are the relatively higher income consumers and commercial producers, processors and traders.		Instead of Intensive Production Systems, poultry production in smallholder units is generally accessible to the most vulnerable target groups.
	Second, there are environmental problems of manure disposal, pollution and loss of bio-diversity resulting from increasing dependence on a narrow range of hybrid breeds.		Manure disposal results in Nutrient Imbalance, and Nitrate Pollution Multipurpose local species and breeds are replaced by cross-breeds and pure-bred exotics - typically requiring greater levels of veterinary and management investment. Maintenance of livestock diversity is important.
	Third, is the extent to which staple cereal crops are used in intensive production systems for animal feed.		Livestock used in intensive production systems are naturally adapted to feeding on a wide range of different food types and sources. Health problems, as well as poorer quality meat and eggs are likely outcomes.

Use of Cereals in Poultry Feeds

The use of purchased cereals and oilseeds for feed allows separation of crop production and use. These concentrate feeds are less perishable and easier to transport than the livestock products. Even if several kg of concentrates are needed to produce one kg of meat, it is still cheaper to establish the production system near the market and to transport the feeds to the animals. Hence most of the intensive landless systems are established in peri-urban regions, in the vicinity of markets in centres of high human population density. Concentrate feeds may be produced from the wider hinterland or imported from overseas. It is estimated that about 40% of the net exports of cereals from developed- to developing- countries are feed grains for livestock (Bruinsma 2003, Chapter 3).

For the world as a whole, it is estimated that the 657 million tonnes of mainly coarse grains, making up 35% of all cereal use, are fed to animals. Most of these are used in the USA and other developed countries. Nonetheless, as poultry and pig production increases, greater amounts of cereals are being fed to intensively managed livestock in developing countries. Over the last decade, the increase in cereal use for feed has been more gradual than expected, partly because of a reduction in intensive livestock production in the transition economies, partly because of high cereal prices in the EU and partly because of increasing efficiency of feed conversion. Poultry are very efficient feed converters, requiring only 2 to 2.5kg of feed per kg of meat produced and even less per kg of eggs. Pigs require 2.5 to 4 kg of dry matter per kg of pig meat, while concentrate fed ruminants require considerably more feed per kg of meat.

The argument that cereals are fed to intensively raised livestock at the expense of hungry people may not be valid. If the cereals were not fed to livestock, it is unlikely that the poor and undernourished would actually benefit from these cereals. A further argument is that cereal use as feed acts as a buffer against price fluctuations as livestock producers will reduce use in times of shortage and high prices.

The global problems of poverty and malnutrition cannot be solved by changing consumer food preferences. Landless production systems provide an efficient and relatively low cost means of meeting much of the growing demand for livestock products. At intermediate levels of intensity they can provide employment and income to the landless resource poor - especially in urban or peri-urban areas. Greater participation in intensive poultry production may be encouraged by improving credit facilities and promoting co-operative production, processing and marketing or vertical integration between large scale processors that supply hybrid or cross-bred stock and concentrate feeds, and buying the product from smallholder producers.

The increased global reliance on poultry and pig meat, for dietary animal protein, has already been emphasized. The higher reproduction rates and the intensity of these production systems allow poultry meat, in particular, to be produced more cheaply than the ruminant meats in similar systems. Furthermore poultry production, and that of pigmeat, lend themselves to industrial-type commercial production, with vertical integration between input supply, production, processing and marketing. Processing and marketing agencies then benefit from economies of scale (see note on PROCESSING).