Welfare in commercial poultry farming? past, current and future

Abstract

The term Poultry is modern, we can say that the feed of products such as eggs and poultry meat has been around since the Neolithic era. The current domestic chickens have their origin from the Bankiva rooster and hen (Gallus gallus bankiva) is a subspecies of Gallus gallus, the wild Asian ancestor of the domestic rooster (Gallus gallus domesticus). Which arrived in Spain through the Silk Road trade, and on Columbus’s second voyage (1493) to the American continent. In 1923, the poultry industry began with a 20-year-old woman, Cecile Lang Steele. She raised 20 to 30 dualpurpose birds and mistakenly received 500 chicks instead of the 50 she had ordered, thus beginning the poultry industry. In 1930, the poultry population census showed that the total number of birds in 35 countries was 1,620 million, of which 90%, that is, 1,458 million, were chickens. The United States Government, at the end of World War II, in 1946, created the “Chicken o Tomorrow Contest”, which completely changed the poultry industry worldwide. In the 20th century, a great global demand for food products began, there are 23,000 million of chickens on the planet; that is, more than three times the human population; Hence many scientists say that we are living on the “planet of chickens” and that these same chickens serve to feed the planet’s population. Currently (2023), almost 60,000 million of chickens are fattened per year and about 4,500 million of hens lay more than 300 million dozen eggs per day. The fundamental question of animal welfare is whether it is related to production because production is inherently related to the amount of product produced (meat or uncomplicated bird is more productive, therefore, no producer should compromise the well-being of ethical, economic, cultural, social, religious, and political dimensions. This is an issue that arouses growing interest in civil society and constitutes one of the priorities of the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH); However, consumers value the welfare of poultry, so producers who ensure the planet and poultry production is essential, producing meat and eggs in free-range environments is more expensive per square meter compared to a cage, and the consumer will have to pay the difference in prices. But where this context really takes us, 100% of the cages can be eliminated or there will be changes in their designs without ceasing to be cages.