An In-Depth Analysis of the Current Status and Trends of China's Broiler Industry

After nearly thirty years of development, China's broiler industry has achieved a transformation from traditional rearing models to modern farming models: First, the broiler industry is a successful representative of China's agricultural industry development, and it has become the industry with the most complete agricultural industrialization, the most typical market-oriented operation, and the most direct integration with international standards. Second, China's broiler industry is a model of scientific and technological progress; through the adoption of new technologies, new equipment, and new processes, the production efficiency of the entire industry has been continuously improved, and the level of industrialization has been increasingly enhanced. Third, the broiler industry plays an important role in helping farmers escape poverty and become prosperous, adjusting the agricultural industrial structure, and building agricultural industrialization. Although China is the world's second-largest broiler producer, compared with internationally advanced broiler industries, China's broiler industry started relatively late and still has a certain gap compared with the United States, the world's major broiler industry country, in terms of production levels, processing technology, and quarantine standards. A survey of 148 items on competitiveness conducted by the UK's Grocery Distribution research institute on major broiler-exporting countries shows that China's chicken farming industry ranks last among major broiler-exporting countries in sanitation and disease prevention and control, management level, government policy and legislative support, and utilization of science and technology; China's production advantage lies in its abundant and relatively cheap labor resources.
   

As an emerging industry, China's broiler industry has at least the following characteristics in its development: First, the development of China's broiler industry is synchronized with macroeconomic and national economic growth, and it is an industry sector with huge development potential; Second, the development of China's broiler industry has been less affected by the planned economic system. In the initial stage of specialized broiler production in China, a large amount of foreign investment was introduced, large-scale Sino-foreign joint ventures were established, and a market-oriented development approach was adopted, making industrial competition relatively orderly; Third, China's broiler industry achieved large-scale and regionalized development relatively early, and the regions where the broiler industry developed rapidly were all mainly export-oriented; Fourth, the links required for modern broiler production, such as the improved breed breeding system, product processing, and market sales, have basically taken shape, providing a relatively good foundation for development; Fifth, for some vertically integrated enterprises, their production levels have reached or approached the world's advanced level, and China holds a relatively large advantage especially in fine cutting and deep-processed chicken products; Sixth, China's broiler industry still has a relatively large gap with Europe and the United States, specifically manifested in low production efficiency and poor production levels of commercial broilers. Seventh, China's broiler industry is still in its initial stage of development, is a strongly cyclical industry, experiences large market fluctuations, and has unstable industrial development.
   

1 Current Status of China's Broiler Industry
   

1.1 Chicken Production and Chicken Trade
   

China's total chicken production increased from 1.358 million tons in 1984 to 10.62 million tons in 2007 (see Table 1), and continued to grow at an annual rate of 5% to 10%, which made China leap to become the world's second-largest chicken producer. Driven by this, China's annual per capita chicken consumption also developed from 1.03 kg in 1984 to 8.7 kg in 2007, an increase of 8 times, and chicken has become China's second-largest meat consumer product after pork. In 2008, China's chicken production accounted for 17.2% of total meat production, an increase of 11 percentage points from 6.2% in 1984.
   

Because Chinese consumers' meat consumption habits favor pork, China's per capita chicken consumption level still lags far behind the international level. In the current major regions of the world, annual per capita chicken consumption in the United States is 44.3 kg, annual per capita chicken consumption in Australia is 35.4 kg, annual per capita consumption in Saudi Arabia is 38.7 kg, and Brazil, also a developing country, has annual per capita consumption reaching 34.3 kg; all of these are far higher than China's annual per capita level of 8 kg. In recent years, due to factors such as food safety, China's chicken exports have continued to shrink. In 2007, China exported 130,000 tons of chicken, accounting for only 1.2% of total chicken production. At the same time, the sharp increase in chicken imports and serious chicken smuggling severely impacted the Chinese market, which also caused serious damage to the interests of China's broiler industry.