STRATEGY ▶▶▶
US broiler farming sustainability report
The National Chicken Council in the US has released its first Sustainability Report, with progress being made on multiple fronts. However, in areas like Chesapeake Bay, the sustainability of broiler production is still hotly contested.
BY TREENA HEIN
In-house com- posting reduces the discharge of contami- nants from the farm into the environment.
F
ollowing in the footsteps of many other poultry indus- try associations around the world, the US National Chicken Council (NCC) released its inaugural sustaina- bility report in the second half of 2021. Like other sim-
ilar documents, it presents a comprehensive overview of the industry’s collective progress on the sustainability fronts of en- vironment (air, land and water), broiler health and welfare, employee safety and wellbeing, food and consumer safety, community support and food security. While this report is sim-
ilar to sustainability reports from other national poultry associ- ations in other countries, there are also differences. Here we look at some highlights and the background. The develop- ment of the 2020 US Broiler Chicken Industry Sustainability Report complements the work of the US Round table for Sus- tainable Poultry & Eggs which is working to ensure the right data is collected to further innovate, drive improvements and support communication about the sustainability of US chick- en. As is the norm, the report includes an updated broiler pro- duction system life cycle assessment (LCA) which shows signif- icant improvements in the US chicken industry’s key sustainability intensity metrics between 2010 and 2020. During that period land use decreased 13% and carbon foot- print by 18%, industry wide. Water consumption dropped by 13%, fossil fuel use by 22% and particulate-forming emissions by 22%. Together with an 86% decline in recorded injuries and sickness over the past 25 years in poultry processing. The re- port also includes a few specific notes for 2020. During that year which, of course, saw the introduction of Covid-19 into the world, more than US$ 33 million and 20 million meals were donated to local communities. That year, too, US broiler exports reached a new peak, totaling 7.4 billion pounds (3.36 bt), involving shipments mainly to China, Taiwan and Mexico.
On the farm Of course, sustainability practices in any country will vary from farm to farm and region to region. It’s explained in the report that at the Arbogast family farm (location not given) over the years, the turkeys were moved into cutting-edge barns and the then-radical practice of no-till was adopted. (In general, tilling farmland causes erosion, requires significant fuel consumption, disturbs soil structure and microbiota, re- duces soil moisture retention and releases carbon into the at- mosphere.) In the early 2000s, four new state-of-the-art chicken barns were built, cover crop use started and solar panels were placed on all the barns. Tom Super, NCC senior vice president of communications, is not sure how many broiler farms in the US have solar panels or other forms of alternative energy, as this is not tracked. However, he says almost every commercial broiler and broiler breeder farm in the US uses concrete heavy use area pads (HUA pads) at the entrance to each chicken barn. HUA pads
8 ▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 2, 2022
PHOTOS: TREENA HEIN
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