Poultry CRC
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- > Read about the CRC's mission, structure, programs and participants.
- > Download the Poultry CRC Annual Report 2007-08 (PDF:2.8MB)
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What does the Poultry CRC do?
The egg and chicken meat industries are important intensive animal industries supplying valuable food products to the Australian consumer and export markets. Through its research and education programs, the Poultry CRC helps these industries produce cost-effective, safe, quality poultry products with a strong focus on socially responsible production, particularly in terms of animal welfare and environmental impact.
Key achievements
Frontier nutrition research
To help reduce reliance on antibiotics, the Poultry CRC established a platform technology to identify and measure gut microflora, because understanding the microflora is essential for managing poultry production with less antibiotics. Poultry CRC researchers then identified dietary and physiological factors that affect gut health and development in chickens. Good gut health means better overall health for the birds and better returns for the producer. The industry is using the results to great effect.
Novel poultry health products and rapid diagnostics
The Poultry CRC established the Australian Poultry Immunogenomics Laboratory at CSIRO, which uses genomics and microarray technologies to search for new poultry health products. CRC researchers also overturned a thirty-year dogma that alpha-toxin caused necrotic enteritis, a disease that costs the global poultry industries an estimated US$2 billion annually.
Provisional patents lodged by the Poultry CRC include:
- a technology to manipulate production traits in poultry;
- a range of phage-displayed peptides to control campylobacter; and
- a new toxin (netB), and possible vaccine candidate, for necrotic enteritis.
The Poultry CRC has seven vaccines, at various stages of development, for Marek’s disease, chicken anaemia virus, fowl cholera, coryza, necrotic enteritis, infectious laryngotracheitis and campylobacter. The CRC, in partnership with The University of Melbourne, is also developing and delivering rapid diagnostic tests, previously unavailable in Australia.
Animal welfare, ecological sustainability and social acceptability
Outcomes of the Poultry CRC’s welfare program include projects addressing human-animal relationships and alternative production systems; a welfare audit of the chicken meat industry leading to national animal welfare standards; and a practical guide to beak trimming.
The Poultry CRC’s environmental program has established methods to measure dust and odour emissions from poultry houses, allowing producers to improve their environmental management programs. Other research is looking at ways of utilising poultry waste products more efficiently, using practices such as litter re-use and vermiculture (worm-farming).
Providing information to the public about the poultry industry is an objective of our online poultry information centre, Poultry Hub. Poultry Hub’s user-driven, constantly expanding encyclopedia is a way of providing such a resource to the community in a reliable, sustainable manner.
Improving industry vital skills
In the Higher Education Sector, our education program supports, or has supported, 26 postgraduate students and 12 honours students, as well as driving the development of three undergraduate courses. The two poultry-specific units at the University of New England, Poultry Physiology (PLTY 300/500) and Poultry Production (PLTY 301/501) are currently being coverted into a fully online format, similar to the successful Avian Health Online model.
Thirteen students, mostly industry people, have completed our Avian Health Online course and the University of Georgia is negotiating with the course provider, The University of Melbourne, to enrol up to 110 students per year (and pay for most of the course’s development costs).
Thirty-six students have completed the two courses offered through the University of New England on poultry production and physiology, with six of them working in the poultry industry. These units will be delivered online within the next 18 months.
To drive Vocational Education and Training that improves the skills of those working in the Australian poultry industry, we have consulted industry and education providers and put together the most comprehensive range of education and training materials specific to the poultry industry, much of it available through Poultry Hub. Delivery of training has commenced through the Queensland Government’s FarmBis Program.
We have produced a series of DVDs and books in collaboration with the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) and the Australian Egg Corporation (AECL) for primary and high school students outlining egg and chicken meat production. We are also funding the World’s Poultry Science Association (WPSA) Schools Program in Queensland, with the program to go national from 2008.
The Poultry CRC also held a workshop in May 2008 to help researchers navigate the registration processes for vaccines and other poultry health products.
Download Poultry CRC reports
Contact the Poultry CRC
Australian Poultry CRC ABN: 67 105 321 088
- PO Box U242
- University of New England
- ARMIDALE NSW 2351
Phone: +61 2 6773 3051
Fax: +61 2 6773 3050
Email: info@poultrycrc.com.au
