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Resource Material
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Title: History of the Meat Chicken Industry
Last Updated: 11 Sep 2007
Author: Dr Vivien Kite
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Australia’s chicken meat industry has a relatively brief history when compared with the other major Australian livestock industries. No official Government records were kept until the mid 1960s so it is difficult to say when intensive poultry production began. However industry sources estimate that three million broilers were produced in 1950/51, compared with an estimated 420.1 million in 2003/04.
Rapid expansion of the poultry industry took place in response to demand during the 1950s. Most production during this time was in the hands of ‘backyard’ producers and larger family operations, who were often involved in the production of chickens as an offshoot of their egg-producing activities as well as being producers and/or distributors of other livestock and produce. The birthplace of the commercial industry was the outer Sydney metropolitan area, although other centres of commercial production quickly sprang up around other major population centres.
In the decade 1950/51 -1960/61, the size of the industry increased almost seven fold. In the early 1950s the first real efforts were made to develop an Australian meat chicken breed, resulting in the release of Australia’s first scientifically bred meat chicken strain in 1959. With the introduction of continuous chain processing systems, the processing of chickens became faster and more efficient and the resultant economies saw a rapid fall in price of chicken to the consumer.
Further expansion of the commercial industry took place in the 1960s associated with these developments and with the rise of the ‘integrator’ in the industry. These were vertically integrated companies (fashioned on the highly successful US meat chicken company model) that owned chicken breeding and hatching operations, feed mills and chicken processing plants and contracted out the growing of chickens from day-old to slaughter weight, to so-called ‘contract growers’.
The establishment of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia, with its first store opening in 1968, had a major impact on the consumption of chicken. In the 12 months from 1970-1971 a total of 75 stores were opened and during the same period total Australian production increased by 38%. Coupled with further improvements in the genetic material available, refinement of the nutrition and husbandry of broiler chickens, improvements in processing technologies and further growth in demand, the industry’s output increased more than five-fold in the 1960s and more than doubled again in the 1970s. It has continued to grow steadily, although less spectacularly, over the past 30 years.
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