Sustainable Poultry Farming/ Ideal Home Project
Ideal Home’s transformative multidisciplinary approach is intent on accelerating the development and adoption of precision, data-driven, integrated solutions to improve the sustainability of the poultry sector. It works with its end users to identify, evaluate, model and recommend best practice in poultry housing infrastructure that will increase productivity, improve animal welfare and help the poultry sector move towards net zero emissions by 2040.
Read more Read lessThe outputs of the Ideal Home research project seek to spur transformational change towards sustainability and productivity across the UK and wider poultry production system. The project also aims to aid in transitioning the sector towards achieving net zero emissions, alongside more sustainable resource management. Moy Park will be the immediate beneficiary of this research. The intention is that the outputs of this project will be rolled out across Moy Park’s UK estate composed of 590 broiler growers and 2,396 broiler houses. Dissemination of the findings to primary producers, suppliers, and retail customers will ensure the poultry production and retail community are made aware of the feasibility of the proposed precision solutions on productivity and environmental protection. This will in turn inform business decision-making around future strategies on farm expansion/investment.
While this feasibility research will directly benefit the commercial private sector, the academic field will also benefit through industrial engagement and the impact of the project outputs on the Universities Research Assessment Framework (REF). Policy makers will benefit from new scientific knowledge around poultry housing to inform evidence-based decision-making too. Finally, individual consumers will benefit from the knowledge that their poultry purchases support high welfare and environmental practices.
The Ideal Home research project is supported by a £250,000 Innovate UK grant. The project is funded for eighteen months.
Innovate UK - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk
There are currently no publications available as this research project is ongoing and at an early stage.
Ideal Home is collaborative in nature and strives to enable direct and measurable impact across the poultry sector. The academic team works closely with its industry partners, JF McKenna and Moy Park to understand current poultry housing infrastructures and collectively ideate on different sustainable, high welfare housing futures.
More than one Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is addressed by Ideal Home due to the multi-disciplinary nature of the project. However, the project identifies most strongly with the challenges of goal twelve which seeks to ensure responsible consumption and production.
Working closely with a large poultry integrator, the research primarily aims to understand and reimagine poultry housing infrastructures. The baseline study informs data-driven ideation which aims to holistically consider sustainability and bird welfare. This requires close examination of the consumption of resources in the construction of the housing and in its operation during the growth cycle and across the lifespan of the building. The outcome of this research seeks to enable reduction of resource use, reuse of waste streams, offsetting of carbon production and sustainable sourcing of raw materials to ensure that poultry production can be as sustainable as possible.
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Professor Greg Keeffe
School of Natural and Built Environment
Queen's University Belfast