Poultry production of the world and the competitiveness of its production

Abstract

Authors discuss and summarize several factors and trends influencing significantly animal protein production and consumptions of the human population based on numerous published information and own data. Comparison between various animal species production levels and systems are presented regarding feed utilization, resource efficiency and environmental footprint related per unit of protein produced. Several examples are presented based on our long term performance tests of broilers and turkeys demonstrating the dramatic performance improvement contributing significantly to the overall protein producing efficiency of the present commercial meat type poultry. Latter development in the poultry breeding sector is the main reason that at present modern meat type fowl is far the most efficient animal protein producer. In this respect the ranking order is: 1 broiler, 2 egg type chicken, 3 high yielding dairy cow, 4 pork, 5 beef cattle. A large number of comparisons demonstrate, that irrespective of animal species the most efficient recourse efficiency, and the smallest environment footprint to produce one unit animal protein is possible only if highly productive types of animals are kept in an environment, where feeding and managemental conditions as a complexity match the needs of the respective animal population. Nowadays the poultry sector is the largest contributor in providing the human population with animal protein compared to all other animal production sectors.