Abstract
Modern broiler chickens are a major animal husbandry success story, both in terms of efficient resource utilisation and environmental sustainability. However, continuing artificial selection for both efficiency and rapid growth will be subject to both biological limits and animal welfare concerns. Using a novel analytical energy flow modelling approach, we predict how far such selection can go, given the biological limits of bird energy intake and partitioning of energy. We find that the biological potential for further improvements in efficiency, and hence environmental impact reduction, is minimal relative to past progress already made via artificial selection. An alternative breeding strategy to produce slower-growing birds to meet new welfare standards increases environmental burdens, compared to current birds. This unique analytic approach provides biologically sound guidelines for strategic planning of sustainable broiler production.
Highlights
Modern broiler chickens are a major animal husbandry success story, both in terms of efficient resource utilisation and environmental sustainability
In order to increase broiler growth rate, and increase the energy use efficiency towards the biological limit, the daily metabolizable energy (ME) intake must be increased to facilitate growth (Equation (1)). This can be achieved by increasing the daily feed intake and this has been the trend in commercial broiler breeding over recent decades[32,33,34,35]
The average daily feed intake at a live weight (LW) of 1.0 kg and 2.8 kg could be increased by 10% and 1.1% respectively compared to current fast-growing birds[21] (Fig. 1)
Summary
Modern broiler chickens are a major animal husbandry success story, both in terms of efficient resource utilisation and environmental sustainability. Selection for increased growth rate will be subject to limitations dictated by the biology of the bird and, as a matter a plateau will inevitably be reached Such biological limits have not generally been considered by the poultry industry, when making predictions on the potential and the consequences of further genetic improvements of the birds in the future. An alternative breeding strategy to produce slow-growing birds to meet expectations of improved animal welfare, via reducing growth rate so that slaughter weight is not reached until 56 days, will inevitably lead to increased resource use and higher environmental burdens
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