Livestock & Feed Bussiness Worldwide: December 2024

Poultry Production Under Pressure: Climate Change Challenges
 
Low farmgate prices of chicken have troubled poultry farmers in the Philippines in recent times - the growing gap between these and retail prices is a problem too glaring to ignore (pages 4-5).
 
Further imports may likely induce more cuts to farmgate prices in the country. Additionally, while Philippine chicken meat production could increase to 1.63 million metric tonnes for readto-cook products in 2025, farmgate prices may only get some upward momentum with a healthy consumption trend keeping pace.
 
Apart from those issues, climate change looms over as the bigger problem faced by the Philippine agriculture sector. "The impact of climate change is often associated with the increase in temperature changes in precipitation and occurrence of extreme weather conditions which all can affect agricultural productivity, posing a grave threat to national food security," S. S. Capitan et. al. state in the study, "Vulnerability and impact assessment of livestock due to climate change in Luzon, Philippines'.
 
Seguing from the economics of poultry production, this issue of Livestock & Feed Business explores the impact of heat stress on chicken meat quality. Thermoregulatory systems are not able to keep up with "the rapid growth rate of muscles, resulting in inability of the modern birds to control their body heat with the fluctuating environmental temperature and high metabolic rates," Zaboli Gholamrez et al. notes (pages 8-9), elaborating the consequences of heat stress on chicken meat quality.
 
Indeed, given how heat stress changes "the aerobic metabolism, glycolysis, and intramuscular fat deposition" in meat quality, leading to "low customer acceptability," the challenges of poultry production go beyond the hurdles on earnings.
 
Such insight suggests that more can be done to ensure the resilience of poultry flocks - when it comes to profitability, it's not only about producing enough to reasonable volumes.
 
The full article is published on the December 2024 issue of LIVESTOCK & FEED Business. To read the full report, please email to inquiry@efeedlink.com to request for a complimentary copy of the magazine, indicating your name, mailing address and title of the report.
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