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Vol 3. No. 1 January 2020 National Poultry Newspaper PO Box 387 Cleveland 4163 Phone (07) 3286 1833 Fax (07) 3821 2637 Email ben@poultrynews.com.au
Cracking start to the year for the poultry industry!
AS we welcome the new year, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight the exemplary efforts of our volunteer firefighters.
Many parts of the coun- try have been battling fires during this festive season and my thoughts go out to all who have been af- fected.
Poultry Hub Australia is looking forward to a cracking new year.
We have welcomed two new team members, an- nounced a plethora of new initiatives and have excit- edly signed up six new industry partners.
We have moved out of the start-up phase and into the planning for the future phase, providing a fantas- tic opportunity to look for- ward to where PHA will be placed in coming years.
We have released the key dates for our open fund- ing call next year and you can check them out on our website.
We would like to wel- come Mr Bruce Dennison, the newest member to join the PHA team.
Bruce has taken on the full-time education officer role and will be leading both our education pro- gram and poultry job ready training.
He has brought a wealth of knowledge and ex- perience from his years working in the secondary school sector across the New England region.
Bruce has already made
a cracking start with our training program, success- fully running two training sessions and organising work experience for some of the participants.
More recently he was able to facilitate three of the participants to start work within the poul- try industry, with more to start their first job in the industry over coming weeks.
A huge achievement!
Bruce is keen to do his part in alleviating the in- dustry capacity shortage and promoting our won- derful industry through education activities.
If you would like to know more, don’t hesitate to contact Bruce via email at poultryhub@une.edu.au Project snapshot – The role of education and attitudes towards hen welfare: a case study of furnished cages
We investigated the impact of education pro- grams and rhetoric on per- ceptions of hen welfare, specifically in relation to
the controversial topic of laying hen housing sys- tems.
We found, through ini- tial focus groups, that few community members had heard of the furnished cage housing system and thus we used this as a model to educate the public about an alterna- tive housing system using scientific-based evidence.
However, despite the scientific-based evidence of the welfare trade-offs in both conventional cage and free-range housing systems, the term ‘cage’ is often perceived negatively by community members and we hypothesised the language we used throughout our education campaign would have a greater impact on public perception than scientific assessments of animal welfare.
Therefore, our educated treatment groups either referred to the alternative housing systems as either furnished cages or fur- nished coops.
To compare the interac- tion between education and language, we included two groups that were not educated on the furnished cage system.
These two groups watched a short anima- tion we made with fun facts about chickens but nothing related to hous- ing, welfare or furnished cages.
When we asked our non- educated groups about the alternative furnished
housing systems, we ei- ther referred to them as furnished cage or coop to see the impact of language without knowledge. Why?
Poultry welfare is im- portant to the Australian public.
And they are having an impact, either directly as consumers, and indirectly, as community members often sign petitions, pro- vide feedback to industry standards and guidelines consultation or simply discuss with friends and family their perspective and understanding of the poultry industry.
However, we predicted the level of knowledge of poultry welfare in the Australian community would be low and thus the impact of well-mean- ing community members could be detrimental for hen welfare.
What we found
Community knowledge of hen welfare, management practices and the Austral- ian egg industry was low, suggesting appropriate edu- cation campaigns are likely to improve the dialogue be- tween the Australian com- munity and egg industry.
Furthermore, while we found our education cam- paigns increased support for the alternative housing system, there was no effect of language.
However, language did have an impact on the sup- port for furnished cages if the respondents were not educated; such that if they knew nothing about the sys- tem and it was referred to as a ‘cage’ rather than a ‘coop’ they felt more strongly against the alternative hous- ing system.
We think this provides important evidence that education is critical in the dialogue between industry and community members.
We don’t know what made our education cam- paign so successful, per- haps that it was evidence
based, or presented in an easy to digest three-min- ute video, or that it was formulated by scientists?
However, empower- ing the public to make informed decisions by rolling out education campaigns seems to be an effective way forward to improve the dialogue between industry and the community, which is ulti- mately what is required to make the best decisions to safeguard hen welfare.
Check out the video on poultryhub.org
For more information on this project, please con- tact principal investigator Dr Peta Taylor at peta. taylor@une.edu.au
Poultry Hub Australia’s new education officer Mr Bruce Dennison.
by TAMSYN CROWLEY Director
AgriFutures Australia seeks RD&E proposals
AGRIFUTURES Australia is inviting applications from suit- ably qualified research providers for projects relating to the Agri- Futures Chicken Meat Program.
The AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program invests in research, de- velopment and exten- sion to increase know- ledge and understand- ing that fosters an in- novative, adaptive and valuable chicken meat industry.
The program focuses on chicken meat pro- duction in Australia from genetic factors through to production and post-farmgate pro- cessing to grow the long-term prosperity of the Australian chicken meat industry.
AgriFutures Chick- en Meat Program’s 2019/20 Open Call
(Round 2) is currently open and closes at 1pm AEDT Tuesday, Febru- ary 4, 2020.
AgriFutures Australia welcomes preliminary research proposals that address one or more of the strategies within the four RD&E objec- tives for the industry,
and outlined in the Chicken Meat Program Five-Year RD&E plan 2019-22.
For more about the Open Call, the Chicken Meat program Five- Year RD&E Plan, and its objectives, visit ag rifutures.com.au/cme- open-call
A snapshot of the video used in this study.
STOCKYARD INDUSTRIES 2020
A COMPANY WITH A VISION!
Happy New Year!
From the Stockyard Industries team. Wishing all our customers a successful 2020!
Stockyard Industries 54 King Street,
Clifton QLD 4361
07 4697 3344
Steven Clohesy
Joe Oliveira
Tin Phung
www.stockyardindustries.com
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