The poultry industry (and agriculture, in general) has an image problem when it comes to sustainability. It’s time to rethink how producers are communicating about their environmental impact with consumers.
Most of the time, consumers only see statistics that blame agriculture for being a main source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S., “but what we should be talking about as an industry is how far we have come in improving our sustainability,” explained Fernanda Castro, DVM, Ph.D., technical service manager, Evonik.
For example, a recent University of Oregon study that revealed significant changes in the poultry industry’s environmental impact between 1965 and 2010. Over that 45-year period, improvements in nutrition, health, welfare, genetics, management, technology, ingredient cost availability and more resulted in a 36% reduction in climate change, a 29% reduction in acidification, a 25% reduction in eutrophication and a 58% reduction in water use.
“You have to be able to educate the population that we’re doing the best in terms of improving our sustainability. In order to do that, we need to be able to quantify it,” she added.
Life cycle assessment
At the 2023 Poultry Tech Summit, Castro shared information about one way poultry producers can measure and report sustainability achievements, the life cycle assessment (LCA).
LCA is a quantitative environmental method that is used to compile and assess the environmental impact of a product, process or activity throughout its entire life cycle.
The method creates a comprehensive (and objective) measurement of how every aspect of poultry production impacts GHG emissions, as well as factors that contribute to water acidification, the ozone layer and more.
“If you have this kind of information, you can educate your customers and consumers. You can also monitor your improvement over time, identify the pain points in your production system and propose improvements in how to improve that,” Castro said.
My takeaways
Sustainability is such an important factor for consumers, however they don’t always understand chicken’s sustainability story.
According to data presented at the 2023 Chicken Marketing Summit, just four out of ten respondents associated “more environmentally friendly and sustainable than other types of protein” with chicken.
If poultry companies were to share objective data on the poultry industry’s environmental impact, I believe it would help convince more consumers, worried about sustainability, to keep chicken as the protein at the center of the plate.
Attend the 2024 Chicken Marketing Summit
The 2024 Chicken Marketing Summit will be held at the Renaissance Birmingham Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa in Birmingham, Alabama, on July 29-31, 2024.
Serving a unique cross section of the chicken supply chain, the Chicken Marketing Summit explores issues and trends in food marketing and consumer chicken consumption patterns and purchasing behavior.
Registration will open in early 2024.
For more information, visit: www.wattglobalmedia.com/chickenmarketingsummit/
