“The egg industry in the U.S. and internationally is in transition,” said Dr. Joy Mench, University of California Davis, during her presentation at the Animal Agriculture Sustainability Summit held during the 2016 International Production & Processing Expo in Atlanta. Mench’s presentation, “The Sustainability of the Layer Industry – Layer Hen House Research – The Coalition for a Sustainable Egg Supply,” focused on the research the Coalition for a Sustainable Egg Supply conducted on a commercial scale to evaluate alternative hen housing.
Mench provided the results of the studies completed on three types of hen housing systems – conventional cage system, enriched colony system and cage-free aviary. The studies evaluated the environmental impact, food safety, animal health and animal well-being of all three housing systems, with the bird type remaining the same in all three systems.
In her presentation on the “Carbon Footprint Toolkit for Poultry and Egg Producers,” Dr. Claudia Dunkley, University of Georgia, reviewed the toolkit’s capability of improving production for poultry and egg producers. Dunkley’s discussion centered on mechanical and non-mechanical farm emissions, of which she provided examples.
“The study was done on a house-by-house basis. The older the house, the more emissions it produced, while solid wall houses had fewer emissions,” stated Dunkley.
The toolkit is in a spreadsheet format and is designed to make calculations for broiler, breeder and pullet farms, with the toolkit providing recommendations for improvements. However, the toolkit still has limitations and cannot estimate emissions from commercial layer farms, though it can be expanded to do this.
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