Brittney Roorda, Director of Marketing with Hy-Line International, spoke to The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell at IPPE in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

“Sustainability has really been part of what we do as a research and development company for more than 80 years,” said Roorda. “We must have birds that will produce more efficiently and that will have great feed conversion, so it’s been part of what we do.”

Hy-Line's initiatives for sustainability

“We've taken the opportunity to evaluate what our responsibility is as a layer-breeder company,” said Roorda. “It has allowed us to really define our commitment in three P’s. One being people, the other being planet and last one being profits.”

On the people side, Roorda said we have a world to feed and the world’s population is definitely not shrinking, it is growing, and the need for food is increasing. Hy-Line recognizes the egg as an amazing source of nutrition for people that is quite inexpensive. So Hy-Line’s goal as a layer-breeder company is to figure out how to produce more eggs to feed more people.

“Also, part of that is how can we create more jobs for people as we go along our path producing these baby chicks?” said Roorda.

The second P is the planet.

“Looking at it from a production and our carbon footprint standpoint, what can Hy-Line do to impact the environment and the planet?” she explained. “How many fewer liters of water are now being consumed by Hy-Line laying hens versus the Hy-Line hen of 30 years ago? How many feed trucks are we now taking off the road because our Hy-Line hens have become so much more feed efficient through the years?”

For more than 80 years, Hy-Line has continuously been working on their sustainability effort.

“Now, we have a term to be able to define this for the audience,” said Roorda. “That all relates back to our carbon footprint.”

The third P is profitability, and looking at not just Hy-Line’s profitability, but truly the profitability for the egg producer and the production of more eggs.

“We're not the only ones who have seen costs increase, especially our egg producers have seen those feed costs increase,” said Roorda. “We know more than 70% of the cost to produce an egg is nutrition. As a company, Hy-Line is working with our nutritionists and directly with our customers on plans to help them develop how they can proceed in an efficient manner that will be profitable for them.”