Consumer Cultures, Environmental Futures Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Consumer Cultures, Environmental Futures - Essay Example In addition, chicken meat production is projected to increase to around 1.2 million tones. Around three-quarters of domestic chicken meat that are supplied in the Australian market are processed by two major processing industries. Over the total poultry production 95 per cent is chicken, the remaining per cent comprises of turkey and duck meat production. The vertical integration in the chicken meat industry is more as compared to other production in the livestock sectors. This leading business has a model whereby the processors provide both day-old chicks and feed for growers contracted to nurture the chickens over about five weeks. To increase productivity of the chicken meat industry, Australia has continued to import new genetic strains that enable producers to improve numerous traits (The Poultry site, 2013). These traits include the increase in meat yield per bird, feed conversion productivity and disease resistance. An individual in Australia consumes an average of 45 kg per p erson and there is a high probability that this will increase by 2014. This means that chicken consumption will remain competitive against substitute meats. In addition consumption of chicken meat is anticipated to grow to 47 kg by 2018 making it the most consumed meat in Australia. This calls for increased production of chicken and one of the chicken industries that is on the fore front to increase this production is the Victorian Chicken Meat Industry. One of the key questions when it comes to Victoria’s chicken meat industry is its location. The broiler farms are located near the processing facilities of the company they are contracted to supply. This is where day old chicks are nurtured to slaughter weight. In addition, the need to reduce the transportation cost, improve access to infrastructure, labor, and the higher need to get near the customers has led to the processing facilities to be located near to metropolitan centers. The Victoria’s chicken meat processin g unit is located primarily in the Melbourne, Barwon, Gippsland, and Loddon regions. To reduce biosecurity risks the Victoria chicken industry has generally separated breeding farms from broiler farms (DEPI, 2013). Melbourne produces 64 percent of the total chicken production whereas the other remaining percent is produced in other production plants in Barwon (18 per cent), Gippsland (9 per cent), and Loddon (7 per cent). The Victorian chicken meat industry generally has investments across all the supply chain and thus making it to have a highly vertically integrated processing unit. This vertical integration ranges from breeding farms, feed mills, hatcheries, broilers farms, and processing plants. There are 224 businesses involved in chicken meat production under the Victoria chicken meat industry. There are around 200 broilers farm that grow meat chickens and work under the Victoria chicken industry where the processors retain ownership of the chickens throughout the supply chain. The victoria has a number of broiler farms that nurtures meat chickens and around 10 breeding facilities. At a single period the Victorian industry raises approximately 23 million broilers and 970,000 breeding stock. In every year there are about 128 million meat