Poultry industry

The most important segment of the livestock industry is the poultry sector. An extremely complicated industry in itself, the poultry sector consists of many different levels of production, including feed factories, hatcheries, breeding farms, and processing plants. Likewise, there are sub-units such as chicken, duck, turkey, and goose in terms of species in the sector. Poultry production involves several stages before poultry products reach consumers, including the rearing of these birds from hatch to peak performance and the subsequent harvesting and processing of broilers and eggs. Therefore, converting broilers to meat products requires a number of processing steps prior to retail. As such, food safety is an important consideration at all phases of poultry meat and egg production. Among poultry species, chicken is the main breeding area around the world and, according to estimates, represents more than 90 percent of the poultry sector.