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Making chicken environmentally friendly – yet keeping it affordable

A whole, baked chicken on a platter with vegetables

Shutterstock.com / Bratwustle

Researchers  from Texas A&M University’s Department of Poultry Science are working diligently to discover more environmentally friendly and innovative ways to keep chicken prices reasonable so that families and individuals alike can afford to enjoy eating chicken more than just once a week.

Justin Fowler, a Ph.D. student in the department of poultry science, has spent his graduate career working under Christopher Bailey, a poultry science professor with particular research interest in poultry nutrition.

“We are finding a way to provide the same level of the availability and price of poultry meat in a way that is more environmentally friendly,” said Fowler. “Removing antibiotics and making things more natural are a major concern for people these days. However, steps towards doing that reduce performance, so either chickens get smaller or chickens get more expensive.”

Fowler said that if we want to maintain the standard of living we have now, there will need to be replacements for the things that we want to pull out of the poultry industry to reduce the negative environmental impact.

Within the last five years, the research conducted in Bailey’s poultry science lab has focused on two areas of research including aflatoxins and prebiotics.

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