The Future of Broiler Production in the Americas

Antnio Mrio Penz Junior

Daniel Gonalves Bruno

Cargill Animal Nutrition

Introduction
According to FAO (2010), during this decade, the expected annual world poultry
growing is 2.8%. During the same period, the total broiler meat production will jump
from 96.9 to 124.1 million tons, beating all other animal meat production grow.
There are many specific reasons to justify this significant grow. The world
population will continue to increase. Together, the developing countries population
income will increase and that will promote the most significant increment in per
capita meat consumption. In the same developing region, the urbanization is
increasing relatively fast and the population is moving from producers to
consumers condition. To serve this new consumer, the poultry product variety
can go from the simplest whole alive bird to sophisticated ready to cook food. Also,
there is no religious restriction on eating poultry products. However, there are
megatrends that can make the poultry production to slow down in some places in
the world. The most significant ones are water and grain availability and qualified
human resources. Also, the society will require more on production sustainability,
food safety and animal welfare, but these are requirements that the industry can
and it is already adapting its production. The expansion main problem will be
country limited resources, where the animal will not be able to compete with human
immediate needs, as water and grains limited availability.
The Americas opportunities in this new scenario are favorable. According to
USDA (2012), just taking in consideration USA, Brazil, Mxico, Argentina, Peru,
Canada and Colombia, in 2011 the Americas were responsible for more than 37
million tons of poultry meat production that represented 46.5% of the total world
production. Just USA and Brazil accounted for 36.8% of the total world poultry
production.
However, this huge area of the world cannot be considered as only one. There
are geographically 3 Americas (North, Central and Caribe and South), with 33
countries and 8 official languages. The total population is 925 million of habitants
just represent 13.3% of the total world population (Wikipedia, 2012).

Poultry Scenario in Americas

Considering the poultry business in Americas, the continent can be
classified in different ways, regarding local characteristics.
The first one was already described, regarding the significant amount of
countries, all of them with different cultures, languages, political preferences and
economic development. Just these socioeconomic situations can impose
differences in poultry production.
However from the technical point of view, most important issue of this
article, all countries are quite similar in genetics, general nutrition concepts and
ingredients used in the diets. Most of the management principles can be
considered similar, too. So, the production variation, that exists, is manageable.
The main differences between countries are still related to the final product. Most
of the countries adapt the production to take care of the local market. Few of them,
the ones that export, must be concern with local market needs and its preferences
and what their international clients require. Due to these differences, the final
product can be from live birds, hot carcass, where the chicken is killed at the
market, in front of the client, cold (shilled), frozen, cut in parts and further
processing. There is no more or less efficient way of production. The market
defines the preference. For sure, more elaborated products production requires
more sophisticated industrial segment, with larger technology investment. Seeing
from different aspects, it is possible to anticipate that the sophistication on final
product will come along, in different speed, in different countries and even in
different regions of the same country. The most important reasons are related to
changes in local gastronomic culture, more urbanization, older people living alone
and family with less time to spend cooking.
Looking all challenges that Americas have to maintain this important position
in the world poultry production, all segments must be looking the future, prepared
to change paradigms. Rabobank (2011) had published an important document that
has a title of This is not our grandfathers chicken industry. The article
concentrates the arguments on USA poultry industry. However, from the business
perspective, that article serves for all poultry entrepreneurs, does not matter where
he/she is located.
This article has the intention to challenge some future trends of this industry
and the important home works that will need to be considered to keep the poultry
business growing in an efficient and competitive way.

Main future challenges

-

Animal Welfare

Consumers are demanding more on animal welfare and there is a positive

correlation between the strictness of welfare legislation and the income of the
citizens of a country and, consequently, their purchasing power (van Horne and
Achterbosch, 2008). Most of the arguments are based on anthropomorphic
position. However, the European Union position is irreversible. As examples, the
Directives 1999/74/EC and 2007/43/EG defined the ban on conventional cages for
commercial egg production after 2012, and maximum broilers in house density,
respectively. The indicators that will be used to measure animal welfare will be
related to good feeding, good housing, good health status, and adequate behavior
(Arnould and Butterworth, 2010). These directives will impose an increment in
meat and egg production cost. Countries that will be exporting to Europe probably
will need to adapt their way of production as the European Union countries will do.
Regarding egg production, Americas countries that produce egg in floor, like
Colombia relevant number of companies do, can take advantage of the cage ban
directive.

Food safety

Food contamination by pathogens is the main concern of consumers (IFC,

2010). Each step of the food supply chain will be increasingly controlled, with
emphasis on risk monitoring through preventive and corrective actions (analysis
and monitoring critical control points). This requires careful selection of input
suppliers, focusing on product quality and not price, which requires evaluation and
maintenance plans, understanding the process and the materials used by
suppliers, and technical knowledge on physical, chemical, and microbiological
risks. Giving proper attention to these new requirements is of big importance for
the poultry industry, particularly considering the exporting countries, which must
comply with the increasing demands of the importers.
Health monitoring of the flocks is and will become increasingly important,
not only to prevent foodborne disease, but also to avoid performance losses and to
ensure bird welfare. This is a big challenge for all countries in Americas. Still, some
have diseases that compromise international poultry trade. The most recent
outbreak happened in Mexico, at the end of last June, when a notification of Avian
Influenza (H7N3) was made by the Mexican Government to OIE (2012). This
situation put in alert all countries that can be related to Mxico, from general
exportation/importation to birds migration. The Brazilian Poultry Organization
immediately put a document with different recommendations to how the country
companies should react regarding foreigner visits to all poultry production units
(UBABEF, 2012).

Environment

Thermal comfort inside poultry facilities is essential, as unfavorable

environmental conditions significantly affect production. Both, excessive cold or
heat may cause production losses and impair bird health and welfare and, in
extreme situations, increase bird morbidity and/or mortality. The evolution of
technology and of the knowledge on thermoregulation physiology and behavior will
reduce mistakes in poultry house design and in bird management that can cause
thermal discomfort is inexcusable. The development of information technology
allows new techniques in the study of broiler thermal comfort, such as the use of
real-time image analysis using video cameras, image-acquisition hardware, and
image-analyzing software programs to acquire, process, and evaluate information
(Moura et al., 2010). Interestingly, inside broiler houses, 80% of the heat is not
produced by lamps or brooding systems, but by the birds themselves. Proper
evaluation of this heat production may allow creating mechanisms for the utilization
of this energy, which could be translated in significant cost savings. This is a long
way for different countries and companies in Americas. Still, there is a discussion
regarding the best housing investment. Due to initial cost, some companies prefer
to continue investing in conventional broiler houses and, at the same time, others
are investing in negative pressure houses and some, even, are building black-out
houses.

Nutrient utilization and feed formulation

The increase of ingredients costs and the pressure to reduce nutrient

environment contamination will force the nutritionists to formulate more accurately,
avoiding large safety margins. Also, the biofuel industry will compete for raw
materials used for animal feeding, and it will make available different byproducts as
digestible dried grain distillers (DDGS) and glycerol. These new ingredients will
need to be standardized, regarding their nutritional composition and the
digestibilities of the nutrients. In this same context, to improve ingredient quality,
heat stress on corn (Mtayer et al., 2009) and soybean meal drying (Helmbrecht et
al., 2010) will be more relevant than it was so far.
In this context, enzymes will be increasingly used, as they improve
ingredient digestibility and nutrient absorption (Cowan et al., 1996). They reduce
the detrimental effects of anti-nutritional factors (Ferket, 2009) and the pollutant
excretion (Penz-Jr and Bruno, 2010).
Better pelleting, expansion, and extrusion processes, among others, will be
more efficiently developed, in terms of physical aspects (temperature, moisture,
pressure, time) and their effects on nutrient utilization (Ferket, 2009). Also, corn
particle size and density may result in different nutrient digestibility, and should be
better evaluated.

With the increase of the prices of soybean meal and other protein sources,
new synthetic amino acids will be available in competitive prices. This will help on
lowering feed costs and reducing nitrogen excretion to the environment (Nahm,
2002). Research on the next limiting amino acids after threonine will be extremely
important, and their requirements will have to be evaluated not only relative to
lysine, but also as to a minimum intake and the impact of their use under practical
broiler production conditions (Kidd, 2009).
With the increase of the prices of corn and other energy ingredient sources,
the levels of energy of the diets will need to be revisited. The opportunity to
reinforce research in net energy evaluation of the ingredients can come along in
the next years, as it is already used for swine and ruminant nutrition. This strategy
may allow reducing feed cost and nutrient excretion (Mohen et al., 2005) and it is
currently being discussed in Australia by the Poultry Cooperative Research Centre
(Clements, 2010).
The utilization of trace minerals will be determined by the better
understanding of their interaction with the immune system, as well as on the quality
of their sources, preventing final product contamination with residues. In addition,
further research on the differences between organic and inorganic mineral sources
is also needed.

Intestinal health

The restrictions on the use of antimicrobials as growth promoters, due to

consumer demands and to the recent understanding of the interaction between
nutrients and intestinal health, intestinal microbiota, and the immune system, will
require nutritionists to change their paradigms. It seems that there will be an
increasing need to concentrate efforts in the modulation of the intestinal microbiota
and immune system through the use of nutraceutics (acidifiers, prebiotics,
probiotics, essential oils, enzymes, osmoregulators, nucleotides, zinc oxide, etc.)
instead of controlling enteric diseases with therapeutic compounds (Ferket, 2009).
In this context, the supply of specific nutrients and the establishment of
specific management practices dedicated to the first phase nutrition will become
increasingly important, and pre-starter diets will be extensively offered. Still,
companies in different countries of Americas do not use this first stage diet.
However, studies have shown the consequences of feed and/or water restriction
during the first hours of the chicks life, resulting in intestinal villi damage (Geyra et
al., 2001; Viola et al., 2009). Another technology that tends to become more
popular is the in-ovo nutrition, when nutrients are injected in to the amniotic fluid of
embryos during the last stage of incubation, stimulating the development and
maturation of the intestinal villi before hatch.

Feed Mill

This is one of the main issues for Americas poultry industry. The need of
investments in new and more traceable feed mill structures will be mandatory to
cope with local and international regulation. The EU nations established the
regulatory 183/2005/CE, implemented at beginning of 2006. The main objective
was related to animal feed hygiene, to guaranty animal and human feed and food
safety. Regulations like these stimulated different countries, especially the meat
exporter ones, to start implementing locally good manufacturing practices (GMP) in
their feed mills.
Also, the industry in Americas will need to change paradigms to understand
and implement the segregation of ingredients concept. So far, corn and soybean
are mainly considered by the company traders as commodities. The final nutrient
composition not always makes the important difference in the negotiation. In the
future, due to the increase of the prices of these ingredients, this oversimplification
will not have space. So, ingredient nutrient variations caused by plant cultivar,
processing, harvest year, nutritional density, presence of mycotoxins, etc., will be
more seriously considered if the main purpose of the business will be reaching the
precision nutrition concept (Li et al., 2000; Neoh and NG, 2006; Zhou et al., 2010).
To accommodate the ingredient differences, the segregation concept must be
implemented in the feed mills. This will demand investments in silos to store
different batches, according to nutritional characteristics of the ingredients. For
corn and other cereals, besides silos investment, the feed mills will need to
implement cleaning structure and gravity separators should become a common
practice to separate them based on their densities. However, the implementation of
ingredient segregation is limited to wet chemistry techniques, which are usually
expensive and time-consuming. This limitation will be overcome by the use of
NIRS (Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy), that allows immediate analysis of
energy as well as amino acid composition and digestibility of each feedstuff batch
(Penz-Jr et al., 2009). So, the design of new feed mills will have to consider the
use of NIRS, providing more storage, dosing, and milling flexibility, which will allow
savings that are not feasible today due to the lack of this physical infrastructure.
The most sophisticated mills will implement the use of in line NIRS feed
formulation.

Utilization of the available knowledge

The progress in information technology will allow the application of growth

models and several related mathematical equations, which will estimate animal
growth according to rearing conditions. The ultimate objective will be optimizing the
rearing process as a function of the companys or farmers needs. Feed intake and
broiler growth prediction models under different scenarios, as those developed by
Emmans, Fisher and Gous, will allow better definition of strategies that will favor
production efficiency. Gous (2005) also mentioned that the idea of abandoning the
conventional formulation proposal and adopting a dynamic proposal, based on

several factors in addition to those considered in least-cost formulations, is not

new.
In addition to growth models, simulation models could also be used to
evaluate risks and to optimize financial return using data mining (correlations,
classifications, associations, neural networks, and clustering) and data analysis by
bioinformatics, meta-analysis, and holo-analysis techniques (Ferket,2009).
Geographic information systems (GIS) are already used for production zoning and
viewing, allowing correlation of performance parameters with the geographical
location of poultry houses in terms of altitude, latitude, and longitude. These tools
are becoming increasingly important to make decisions as to which product should
be used to maximize the economic performance of birds under different rearing
conditions. However, the efficient use of these tools depends on the availability of
detailed and accurate data, with a complete house inventory.
There are even more futuristic tools that control animal performance in real
time. The IMS technique (Integrated Management Systems) aims at providing a
completely on-line and real-time system, with no human interference, except when
a problem is detected. This technique is operated by a visual image analysis
(VIA) system that, using video cameras placed inside the poultry house, allows the
continuous collection of images. By measuring bird area and length, bird body
weight and carcass yield may be determined with accuracy similar to that of
conventional tables (Penz-Jr et al 2009). This technique is already used for pigs in
Europe, and prediction measures for broilers are still under study because the
feathers make the true measure of meat surface area difficult (Green and Parsons
2006).

Conclusions
The opportunities of local and export poultry companies in Americas are big.
The continent is under populated and produces almost 50% of the total poultry
produced in the world. So, either the population increases per capita chicken
consumption and/or this significant amount of poultry production will need to
continue to be exported. There are certain areas that could make some of the
Americas countries less competitive than others as lack in water, local grain auto
sufficiency and enough number of people with technical knowledge. Besides that,
the industry will need to cope with new challenges that will be imposed as animal
welfare, food safety, environment, nutrient utilization and feed formulation,
intestinal health, feed mill and utilization of available knowledge. The companies
and countries that will be ready for changes will improve faster and will be more
competitive.

Bibliography

Arnould C, Butterworth A, (2010) Proceedings, European Poultry Conference, 13,

159
Clements M (2010) Poultry International, 18-19.
Cowan WD, Korsbak A, Hastrup T, Rasmussen PB (1996) Animal Feed Science
and Technology, 60, 3, 311-319.
EUROPEAN COMISSION 2005 downloaded at
http://europe.eu.int/comm/foods/fs/afs/afs index en.html
Ferket (2009) World Poultry, 25, 10.
Geyra A, Uni Z, Sklan D (2001) British Journal of Nutrition, 86, 5661.
Gous RM (2005) Proceedings, Symposium on Poultry Nutrition, 15, 412-420.
Green DM, Parsons DJ (2006) Mechanistic Modelling in Pig and Poultry Production
(eds R. Gous, T. Morris and C. Fisher), Cab Internacional, 305-321.
Helmbrecht A, Redshaw MS, Elwert C, Veldkamp T, Lemme (2010) Proceedings,
European Poultry Conference, 13, 146.
IFC - International Food Information Council Foundation 2010 Food & Health
Survey, 2010 downloaded at:
http://www.foodinsight.org/Content/3651/2010FinalFullReport.pdf.
Kidd MT (2009) Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia, 38, 201-204.
Li YC, Ledoux DR, Veum TL, Raboy V, Ertl DS (2000) Poultry Science, 79, 1444
1450.
Mtayer JP, Debicki-Garnier AM, Skiba F (2009) Proceedings, Journes de la
Recherche Avicole, 8.
Moehn S, Atakora J, Ball RO (2005) Advances in Pork Production, 16, 119.
Moura DJ, Bueno LGF, Lima KAO, Carvalho TMR, Maia APAM (2010). Revista
Brasileira de Zootecnia, 39, 311-316.
Nahm KH (2002) Critical Review in Environmental Science and Technology, 32, 116.
Neoh, S.B., NG, L.E (2006). Proceedings of Australian Poultry Science
Symposium, 79-82.
OCDE-FAO, Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019.

OIE Influenza aviar altamente patgena Mxico. 22.06.2012.

Rabobank. This is not your grandfathers chicken industry Thoughts from a
bankers perspective. Rabobank Indistry Note # 293, December, 2011.
Penz-Jr AM, Bruno, DG (2010) Proceedings, Conferncia Facta de Cincia e
Tecnologia Avcolas, 28, 17-34.
Penz-Jr AM, Figueiredo, AN, Bruno, DG (2009) Proceedings, Conferncia Facta
de Cincia e Tecnologia Avcolas, 27.
UBABEF. Procedimentos de Biosseguridade da UBABEF. Circular UBABEF no
042/2012.
Van Horne PLM, Achterbosch, TJ. (2008) Worlds Poultry Science Journal, 64, 4052.
Viola TH, Ribeiro AML, Penz-Jr AM, Viola ES (2009) Revista Brasileira de
Zootecnia, 38, 2, 323-327.
Zhou Z, Wan HF, Li Y, Chenz W, Qi ZL, Peng P, Peng J (2010) Animal Feed
Science and Technology, 157, 1, 99-103.
Wikipedia, 2012