Page 28 - Food & Drink Magazine March 2021

MEAT, FISH & POULTRY
Inside the
hen house
In just over 50 years, Australia’s consumption of chicken increased tenfold. Industry expert and journalist Peter Bedwell provides an overview of the poultry sector.
AUSTRALIA leads the world in chicken meat consumption. We eat around 50 kilograms per person per annum, which is a far cry from the 4.6 kilograms in 1965. So just what has driven this phenomenal rise in a nation once famous for its beef and sheep meat consumption?
Cost in the obvious answer, but the emergence of supermarkets as the retail outlet of choice from the late 1960s was a significant factor in ‘the rise of chicken’.
Ingham’s is the largest chicken meat processor in Australia today, with 40 per cent of the total market. This is partly due to a long-standing partnership with Woolworths dating from when chicken started to gain popularity. Ingham’s is #8 in Food & Drink Business’ Top 100 Food & Drink Companies for 2020.
It has continued to evolve with market demands and shifting demographics. The product range, once limited to the whole bird, is now crowded with a wide range of options from meal type to cultural preferences.
Other initiatives recognise the consumer concern for animal welfare and though there is little strong scientifically based evidence that free range is more welfare friendly than raising birds in enclosed sheds, the average consumer believes differently.
This has led to a number of new products being defined by production methods, including the RSPCA broiler accredited scheme for broiler growers that encompasses over 90 per cent of broiler production today.
Hazeldene’s Chicken Farm, a family-owned business located near Bendigo, was the first to
Ingham’s quickly adopted the system as demand for chicken meat grew at over three per cent a year.
In simple terms, a contract grower owns the land and builds the sheds and maintains the farms’ operations to the integrating company standards. The newly hatched chicks are delivered from company owned hatcheries and feed is delivered from the integrators’ feed mills.
In Australia, the birds are grown to market weight in 36 to 44 days, depending on the size and type of cuts required by retail customers.
Poultry housing on contract grower farms today is highly automated and uses sophisticated computer-based control of the
shed climate to optimise the birds’ growth and welfare.
Regulation of key parameters such as stocking density of birds in sheds is the responsibility of state governments. RSPCA accredited farms involve a lower stocking density limit than state regulation allows.
The RSPCA regulation lighting protocols are considered to benefit the birds’ welfare, and its perching and deeper floor litter protocols are more than the minimum state based requirement. Ammonia levels in sheds are required to be monitored as part of the accreditation standards.
The contract grower system continues as the backbone of production: market leader
“ Changing demographics mean the poultry sector is going in new directions with its production methods and product offerings.”
As Ingham’s and Woolworths grew, quick service restaurants (QSRs) started to emerge, in particular Kentucky Fried Chicken. This boosted the unstoppable love of chicken.
Other factors that came into play was the perception of chicken as a ‘healthy’ protein and relatively easy to cook.
adopt the RSPCA accreditation for broilers in 2011, which is now an almost universal standard.
WHO GROWS THE CHOOKS
A critical factor in modern poultry production is the contract grower system.
Developed primarily in the US, Australian integrators like
28 | Food&Drink business | March 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au