Industry taking care of its brood

PHILIPPA STEVENSON finds a poultryman who insists that, contrary to allegations about the industry, his chickens are not mistreated.


We're licking our fingers after munching through more than 30kg of chicken each per year - more than we eat of lamb, beef or pork.

The rapid rise in chicken consumption in the past 10 years, to more than 30 per cent of all meat eaten, has propelled the industry to the top of the pecking order.

More than $500 million in retail sales makes it the country's main intensive livestock industry.

Most supermarket meat cabinets are now dominated by chicken, to the exclusion of red meats.

But while many see a cheap meal, others see birds needing liberating from abusive farming practices.

Tegel recently sought to cash in on anti-genetic-modification feeling and promoted its move to feeding its chickens non-GM crops.

Its advertising also stressed that its chickens and turkeys - like all poultry meat in New Zealand - were not genetically modified, nor given hormones.

Green MP Sue Kedgley praised Tegel's use of non-GM feed but questioned the company's claims that it produced pure, natural and healthy chicken when the birds were routinely given antibiotics and reared in crowded barns.

The SPCA has backed a complaint by Ms Kedgley to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board.

Anyone who had seen broiler chickens struggling for space on their weakened legs would find Tegel's claims misleading, said SPCA national campaign coordinator Hans Kriek.

Broiler chickens, or those raised for meat, used to take 80 days to reach slaughter weight but now took only 40 days with selective breeding, routine feeding of antibiotic growth agents and exposure to 23 hours of light to encourage constant eating, he said.

Mr Kriek said the rapid growth placed enormous stress on chickens' bones, hearts and lungs.

They were also kept in hugely overcrowded conditions under industry standards which allowed 20 birds to a square metre.

"The fact is that broiler chickens aren't pure, natural or healthy. Instead, they are chemically propped-up, unhealthy creatures who suffer when large corporates put profit before welfare," Mr Kriek said.

Standing at one end of a 90m-long barn housing 24,000 scurrying, flapping and chirping 18-day-old fledglings, Auckland chicken farmer John Stoppard rejects allegations of mistreatment.

The chairman of the Poultry Meat Producers Society said the chicken industry was an easy target for politicians wanting exposure in election year.

He suggested that the issue had also been highlighted because the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee was developing a welfare code for the poultry industry.

But New Zealanders' meat-buying habits appeared unaffected by the allegations.

"It's mostly price-driven, frankly," he said. "It's a very, very popular meat and dish."

Mr Stoppard and his wife, Rosemary, both aged 63 and former Taranaki deer farmers, bought a broiler chicken unit eight years ago. Mr Stoppard, also a legal executive in an Eltham law practice, had wanted a change from office work.

Friends had also made the transition from deer to hens and the couple liked the idea that the industry was not production-driven.

"In the deer industry, and many other primary industries, people produce flat out and hope that someone can sell it.

"Whereas, in the chicken industry, the principle is that they don't hatch the egg unless they have a sale of the chickens. There's no boom or bust in production or prices - it's fairly static."

The Stoppards also like the rural lifestyle, which, because their stock are featherweights, they will be able to continue to enjoy as they age.

The couple, with son Anthony, raise up to 130,000 chickens in five barns every two months. Eight years ago it was one of the larger broiler chicken operations in the country but today "the sky is the limit".

Last year, the industry's approximately 120 farms produced 115,000 tonnes of meat from 74 million chickens, 90 per cent of it channelled through three companies, Tegel Foods, Inghams and PH van den Brink.

Mr Stoppard, who supplies Tegel, calls the companies "the integrators" because they own and supply the chickens and their feed, and process and sell the finished product.

The farmer's job is to provide the housing, manage the growing chickens and raise them to designated weights for specific markets.

The rearing operations are sophisticated, high-tech and capital intensive. The Stoppards have an investment of about $2.6 million in their six barns containing imported feeding and monitoring equipment.

Scales are placed throughout the barns and a chick settling on the platform has its weight automatically recorded, the readout visible on a display outside the barn. It shows the male chicks in one barn are, as usual, gaining weight more quickly than their sisters next door.

The 18-day-old female chicks the Business Herald sees are just losing their yellow birth fluff, leaving patches of pink skin rapidly disappearing under white feathers.

The artificial lighting is low and augmented by daylight coming through large wall fans, which circulate air to maintain a consistent temperature. More cooling fans automatically turn on in summer.

Feed trays run the length of the barn and there are numerous water outlets.

About 80 electric motors, all linked to alarms, run the operation. If any motor falters, the alarms, which can be set to call cellphones, summon the Stoppards.

Six times a year they stock up to 130,000 birds, but not all are kept for the full two months. Some go to markets which demand lighter weights, reducing numbers by about 20 per cent every few weeks until the biggest birds are left.

"We've farmed sheep, dairy and deer and these birds are the best-looked-after animals I've ever experienced handling," Mr Stoppard said.

"They don't have any of the highs and lows of feed, water and environment that other livestock might have. The sheds we keep them in are completely environmentally controlled at the optimum environment the birds enjoy.

"It's all very well for people to go on about free range, but I've got a free-range operation nearby and you want to be there on a wet, cold day and see the birds huddling under a macrocarpa tree, then come and have a look at my birds and tell me which appear to be the better off."

Mr Stoppard said the birds were given a "minimal amount" of mild antibiotic when young, mainly to prevent the gut disease enteritis, to which they are susceptible.

Antibiotic use did not speed the bird's growth but maintained a healthy chicken able to utilise its food. The medication was withdrawn well before slaughter, he said.

Trials overseas had shown that not adopting the preventive approach meant more aggressive antibiotics had to be used when the birds succumbed to infection.

Poultry Industry Association executive officer Mike Brooks said the industry and Technology NZ were financing a three-year research project examining feed practices which could reduce enteritis and enable antibiotic use to be decreased.

The $700,000 project, financed equally by the two organisations, was the industry's single biggest investment in science, he said.

In the barns, Mr Stoppard said, chick growth was invariably slowed in the first couple of weeks to allow them to develop stronger bones and a good heart. There were no longer problems with weak legs.

The birds had been bred to grow quickly through breeding selection. Advances were speedy because of chickens' short breeding cycle and the vast genetic pool among the thousands of stock from which to select.

Mr Stoppard said lights in his barns were off for eight hours a day, for the birds to rest and digest food.

He surveyed the birds and said: "I'd rather be a chicken in here than sandwiched into a 747 aeroplane or crowded at a rugby match."