Poultry International - November 2009

egg research secure
Industry-focused research in Australia received a significant boost
earlier this year with the granting of new funding for the Poultry CRC.
Mark Clements

During a period when too many are cutting back research budgets, it’s encouraging when new funding for research is announced, and this was the case in August this year when Australia’s Poultry Cooperative Research Centre Programme (Poultry CRC) revealed that it had won an AUS$28 million ($24.5 million) grant from the government, allowing the formation of the Poultry CRC 2.

;e grant, together with cash and in-kind support from its participants, will give the organisation total resources of almost AUS$87 million — enough to secure its future for almost another decade.

So what is the CRC, what does it do and why is it, and its funding, important? It might be easier to answer the last question ;rst.

According to James Kellaway, managing director of the Australian Egg Corporation Limited: “;e poultry CRC has dramatically increased the level of collaboration and cooperation among researchers and industry, providing a sound platform for productivity growth leading to industry sustainability. Given the latest population projections for Australia, CRC 2 is a timely investment.”

Australia established the CRC in 1990 as a way of linking universities, governments and industry in order to address major industrial and scienti;c challenges in a collaborative manner. ;e programme is administered by the

Poultry CRC CEO Professor Mingan Choct described the new funding as a “once in a generation opportunity” for poultry research in Australia.

Commonwealth Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and Poultry CRC 1 was established in July 2003.

A substantial part of research of speci;c relevance to the chicken meat industry carried out in Australia, particularly in areas where companies are not competing against each other, is now coordinated and managed through the Poultry CRC.

CRC 1, whose projects are now in their closing stages, had four main programmes. ;ese were:

✷ enhanced quality and productivity using novel approaches to digestive physiology and metabolism of poultry;

✷ sustainable poultry health through discovery, development and application of emerging biotechnology;

✷ improved management of poultry welfare and the environmental impact of poultry production;

✷ education and training. ;e programmes were designed

to help the sector move towards the sustainable production of chicken meat without reliance on antibiotics; to develop and commercialise new poultry health products and better diagnostic tools; to foster a poultry industry with enhanced bird health and welfare standards; and to encourage the improved education and skills of poultry personnel.

Among those projects undertaken through the Poultry CRC has been a study that showed that broilers raised on ;brous litter were generally more uniform in feed consumption.

A laboratory manager at poultry producer Inghams Enterprises undertook the cooperative studies that looked at the productivity and health of broilers raised on rice hulls, so;wood sawdust, pine shavings, re-used shingle batch pine shavings litter, shredded paper, chopped straw and hardwood sawdust.