June 14, 2007

Industrialization of chicken industry draws criticism

The intensification of the poultry industry is inviting critics, foremost amongst them was Hattie Ellis, a New Zealand author who has written a book about the poultry industry.

Originally wanting to write a book on chicken recipes, she stumbled upon the industrialized chicken sector, was appalled by the conditions in the chicken industry and elected to write about the US$380 billion per year poultry industry.

One number worth noting was that there are now twice as many chickens in the world as humans, she wrote, most of them kept for meat and eggs. In the US alone, 24 million chickens are slaughtered every day.

Poultry litter is becoming a problem in the US, where the sheer amounts of it is causing it to run into soil and rivers.

Around a third of the Earth's land surface is now used to grow crops that would go to animal feeds, she said. Although chickens have a good conversion rate ( 2kg of meat to 1 kg of meat), the sheer numbers meant that a lot of land would have to be devoted to growing the crops that would feed the animals.

In Brazil, for example, large tracts of land have had to be cut down to make way for soy that would be fed to animals, she said.

Still, she noted that efforts are being made to increase feed efficiency of poultry and find more environmentally friendly ways of using poultry litter. One way is to burn poultry waste, for example, a method which is in its infancy in the US and Australia.