Systematic Mapping of Research on Farm-Level Sustainability in Egg and Chicken Meat Production

Abstract

The sustainability of future poultry production needs to be improved in order to meet global challenges. The global chicken population has expanded significantly in recent decades, due to increased human demand for eggs and chicken meat. Therefore, it is critically important to mitigate challenges to the sustainability of modern poultry production, such as pollution, the depletion of finite natural resources and animal welfare issues. This study systematically mapped the scientific literature on farm-level sustainability in egg and chicken meat production. The concept of sustainability was considered holistically, covering its economic, environmental and social dimensions, each consisting of a broad range of different aspects that may contradict or reinforce each other. The literature published between January 2000 and March 2020 with a geographical focus on Europe, North America and Australia–New Zealand, were included. The literature search resulted in a total of 428 hits, but after the exclusion of articles that did not match the scope of the study, only 26 papers remained for the systematic mapping. Of these, only three papers covered all three dimensions of sustainability. Aspects of economic sustainability were addressed in 10 papers, aspects of environmental sustainability in 18 papers, and aspects of social sustainability in 23 papers. The findings in this study are an important foundation for the discussion and prioritisation of future actions to increase knowledge of farm-level sustainability in egg and chicken meat production.

A Systematic Mapping of Current Literature on Sustainability at Farm-Level in Beef and Lamb Meat Production

“…This was a surprisingly low number, bearing in mind that sustainability has been on the agenda for over 30 years and that beef and lamb meat farming is an important share of global livestock production. However, in previous systematic mappings we detected a similar trend among papers covering sustainability on farm-level in other species [23][24][25][26]. It was more common for papers to cover one or two of the sustainability dimensions.…”

“…The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project about sustainability in livestock production. Findings related to dairy [23], pig [24], finfish [25] and egg and chicken meat [26] production at farm-level have been published previously.…”

“…However, only one of the six sheep papers that included environmental sustainability studied GHG emissions, and instead biodiversity and land use were the main aspects of environmental sustainability considered. Social sustainability was studied to a larger extent in the beef cattle and sheep papers than previously observed in systematic mappings of dairy [23], pig [24], finfish [25] and egg and chicken meat [26] production.…”

Sustainability and Quality Aspects of Different Table Egg Production Systems: A Literature Review

“…Technical literature databases were searched with the keywords listed in the table. Similarly to the work of Gunnarsson et al [26], the fit of search results to the topic was judged based on their title and abstract. As a next step, a content analysis was performed on the selected literature.…”

“…However, in addition to animal welfare, there are many aspects to sustainability, including economic issues, environmental factors, human health and food safety, as well as various social values [25]. Gunnarsson et al [26] systematically mapped these factors based on scientific publications on poultry over the past two decades. The Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply (CSES) project [27][28][29] evaluated three egg production systems (conventional cage, enriched colony, and cage-free aviary) in the U.S. from the aspects of animal behavior and well-being, environmental impact, egg safety and quality, food affordability, and worker health.…”