COVID pandemic had some positive effects on poultry health and welfare
Measures Perdue Farms adopted led to “as good or better than normal” flock health.Management techniques adopted to cope with COVID-19 production challenges led to improvements in bird health and welfare for many poultry producers.
Bruce Stewart-Brown, DVM, senior vice president of technical services and innovation at Perdue Farms, said the pandemic affected nearly every part of the company, forcing the company to make interventions to respond to changing consumer demands.
But he said the measures Perdue Farms adopted, including reducing bird numbers in the field, led to “as good or better than normal” flock health.
When the food-service sector went down in March 2020, food-service plants had chickens already in the pipeline with no place to go with them, Stewart-Brown told Poultry Health Today. There was also a dramatic decrease in the need for big-bird deboned meat.
Read the full article and watch the video interview on Poultry Health Today.