The Cost and Market Impacts of Slow Growth Broilers

I just finished up a new working paper (available here) with my Purdue ag econ colleague Nathan Thompson and Shawna Weimer, a soon-to-be assistant professor of poultry science at the University of Maryland.

Readers may recall my post from a couple months ago on consumer demand for slow-growth chickens. This new paper focuses on producer costs of switching to slow-growth broiler chicken. Here’s the motivation from the paper (references removed for readability):

“While modern broilers only live about six weeks, there are concerns that the bird’s legs are unable to adequately support the larger bodyweights, leading to pain and an inability to exhibit natural behaviors. As a result of such findings, animal advocacy organizations have begun to pressure food retailers to use slower growing breeds, European regulators have encouraged slow growth broilers, national media attention has begun to focus on the issue, and some animal welfare standards and labels have begun to require slower growing broiler breeds. There has been some consumer research on demand for this attribute, but little is known about the added production costs associated with slow growth chickens.”

We obtained data from commercial breeding companies on two slow growth broiler breeds (called Ranger Classic and Ranger Gold) and data on two modern fast growing breeds (called Ross 308 and Cobb 500). Here are the growth curves for the four broiler breeds:

The two slow growth breeds are, well, slower growing. The slower-growing breeds take 54 and 59 days, respectively to reach 6 lbs, whereas the faster growing breeds both hit this target weight in about 41 days.

These growth data are combined with data on feed intake, prices, assumptions about stocking density, and more, and we calculate costs and returns under a number of different scenarios. Here are the main results for the most likely scenario where producers choose the number of days to feed broilers so as to maximize net returns and where slow growth broilers have a more generous stocking density than fast growth broilers, as dictated in many animal welfare guidelines.

About 17.45 lbs/ft2/year (or 73%) more chicken on a dressed weight basis is provided by the two fast vs. two slow growth productions systems, on average. Thus, substantially more barn space, or square footage, would be required to produce the same volume of chicken from slow as compared to fast growth breeds. Costs of production average $0.54/lb for the two slow growth breeds and average $0.47/lb for the two fast growth breeds, implying costs are 14% higher per pound for the slower growth breeds. Fast growth breeds are substantially more profitable - generating returns about twice as high per square foot than the slower growth breeds. We calculate that the slower growth broilers would need to obtain wholesale price premiums of $0.285/lb and $0.363/lb to achieve the same profitability as the best performing fast growth breed.

We also use these estimates to calculate potential market impacts that would occur if the entire industry transitioned from fast to slow growth broiler breeds. Under the most likely scenario, we calculate that converting to slow growth breeds would increase retail chicken prices by 1.17% and reduce the amount of retail chicken sold by 0.91%, resulting in losses in producer profits of $3.5 billion/year. We also calculate that consumers would be worse off by $630 million/year, assuming their demand for chicken doesn’t change in response to the switch from slow to fast growth. Increases in consumer willingness-to-pay of 8.5% would be needed to offset the adverse effect on producer profits.

It’s Election Season – For Food Too. California Prop 12 Edition

At this point, you’ve probably seen enough campaign ads that you don’t need me to tell you that elections are around the corner. 

Among several food and agricultural issues up for vote this year across the country is Proposition 12 in California.  The official California voter guide has the following information on the initiative:

If this feels like deja vu, you’re right. California votes passed a similar law in 2008 (Prop 2).  The new bill (Prop 12) goes further by explicitly specifying a minimum amount of space per farm animal and by requiring cage free production systems for egg laying hens by 2022.

Allison Van Eenennaam, animal scientist at UC Davis, has weighed in with her (critical) thoughts on Prop 12, and she pointed out the irony that the main donor against Prop 12 is an animal advocacy organization that would like the conversion to cage free to happen sooner than is required in this proposition.

I’ve received a few calls from reporters asking my thoughts on potential market impacts of Prop 12. I’ll share them here.

• I’ve co-authored two papers on market impacts of the previous Prop 2 and the associated state legislation that went into effect in 2015 (see this paper with Conner Mallally and this one with Trey Malone). The paper with Conner showed a roughly 30% price impact of Prop 2 immediately after it went into place, an effect which fell to about 10% about a year and a half later.

• There are reasons to expect Prop 12 to have smaller or larger effects than what we measured for Prop 2.

  • Why smaller? An increasing share of egg production, nationwide, is coming from cage free production systems (see data here), and if pledges by food retailers to go cage free are upheld, more than three quarters of the industry will be cage free by 2025. Moreover, a number of other states have passed laws to go cage free. Given these apparent trends toward increasing cage free, the effects of Prop 12 per se may be small. That’s not to say that egg prices won’t rise (they will), but that Prop 12 may not be the ultimate proximate cause.

  • Why larger? Well, retailer pledges may not be upheld and industry conversion to cage free has slowed. Cage free and organic combined are only around 17% of the total laying flock at present. Moreover, our previously estimated price impacts of Prop 2 occurred in a situation where producers did not have to undertake large capital investments. Producers could comply with the space requirements that resulted from Prop 2 by removing a hen or two from a cage. By contrast, Prop 12 will require entirely new housing systems, resulting in significantly higher conversion costs than did Prop 2.

• If I was forced to make a guess about the effect size coming from a future study of the impacts of Prop 12 (a future study like the ones I conducted with Conner or Trey), I’d guess something around a 15-25% price increase in retail shell egg prices by mid-2022 relative to the counterfactual of no Prop 12.

• There are other impacts of Prop 12 that are getting less attention but could have big impacts. In particular, Prop 12 would prohibit sales of pork from gestation crate systems. Because California relies on the rest of the U.S. for virtually all it’s pork, I could imagine situations in the short run where retailers have difficulty sourcing enough supplies that comply with the new regulation. If this seems far fetched, remember when Chipotle had to stop selling carnitas, and then, for at time, sold the pork dish with supplies that did not meet it’s guidelines? Another potential consequence, noted by Van Eenennaam is that Prop 12 would prevent “scientific and agricultural” research from studying animal behavior in conditions that don’t comply with Prop 12. It’s hard to quantify the impact of the inability to learn about certain research questions, but the impact isn’t zero.

Happy voting!

Slow Growth Chicken - What do Consumers Think?

What do you think about slow-growth chickens?  If you're like most people I've asked, your answer is probably "what the heck is a slow growth chicken?"  

Food retailers, however, aren't wondering because they're being asked by animal advocacy organizations to make new commitments to only buy chicken from slower-growing birds (here is the request in the EU and here is the Humane Society of the United States on the issue).

First, what is slow growth chicken?  Here's from my new paper on the topic just released by the journal Poultry Science (references omitted):

“Genetic improvements have allowed poultry producers to rear broilers faster and to heavier weights than was possible in previous decades , with the result being more affordable chicken for consumers. However, some research has suggested that rapid growth may result in broilers that suffer from leg damage and pain. These ideas have recently gained traction in popular media and have led to calls for older heritage breeds of chickens, or newer slower growing chickens that are argued to be associated with improved taste and higher broiler welfare. Some research suggests little to no independent relationship between days of growth and consumer sensory evaluations of chicken , and other research suggests that slow-growing breeds are deemed less tender and less juicy than conventional chicken breeds. Nonetheless, consumer preferences for chicken may be as much affected by perceptions and labels than by actual sensory characteristics.”

The new paper reports on the results of some surveys I conducted late last year with about 2,000 U.S. chicken consumers for a project funded by the Food Marketing Institute, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, and the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (a fuller, un-gated report of the results is here).  One of the main results is that most consumers don't know much about slow growth chickens, and as a result, positive or negative information can really sway people one way or the other.  

One group of people were given no extra information.  Another group of people received "pro" slow growth information from articles in NPR (as reported by Dan Charles) and the New York Times (as reported by Stephanie Strom), and yet another group of people received "anti" slow growth information from the National Chicken Council.

After receiving this information, consumers made a number of choices in a simulated retail environment showing packages of chicken breasts with different labels and prices.  These choices were used to back out consumers' willingness-to-pay for the slow-growth label (at present there is no widely adopted slow-growth label, so I created one myself for use in this study).  Here is the distribution of willingness-to-pay ($/lb) for slow growth and organic labels in the different information treatments.

Some of the most interesting results related to the extreme lack of knowledge people have about broiler production in general and slow-grown in particular.  For example, here are some results when they were asked what they thought a variety of different labels implied.  

The table shows the average beliefs about animal welfare, expense, healthfulness, safety, and taste of different labels. Without extra information, slow growth labels tended to be associated with disadvantageous beliefs. Without additional information, slow growth labels are associated with signaling the lowest safety, taste, and health of the labels considered.

Here's how I concluded the article:

“Given the disadvantageous beliefs consumers hold about slow growth claims, a substantial marketing effort would likely be needed for the attribute to become a major determinant of consumer choice. Given consumers’ lack of knowledge about broiler production, simply informing consumers of already existing practices (e.g., cage free and no added hormones) could be a more cost-effective way of boosting chicken demand. That said, it is possible that the presence of hormone absence labels may exacerbate the misinformation problem by indirectly suggesting that there are some brands of chicken that use growth hormones. While organic labels are associated with positive beliefs and are valued relatively highly by consumers, organic production entails significantly higher costs in comparison to non-GMO or no antibiotic claims.

Perhaps the most significant factor explaining the increase in chicken consumption over the past several decades is price. Increases in production efficiencies have reduced chicken prices relative to the price of beef and pork. Perhaps not surprisingly then, this study also shows price to be a major determinant of choice for consumers. Nonetheless, there is a non-trivial minority of consumers who are relatively unconcerned about chicken prices, and these consumers are the target market for the label claims considered in this study.”

My New TEDx Talk on Animal Agriculture and Animal Welfare

A couple months ago, I was asked to give a talk at a TEDx event put on at Purdue University.  The video is finally available online.  I talked about the evolution of animal agriculture and the impacts on food prices and animal welfare, and I ended with my proposal for an animal welfare market, which I've previously written about here and here.

Recently there has been a strong push for better treatment of produce animals. Jason's talk asks whether society is ready to pay the price for the better treatment and if the better treatment society is pushing for really increases the animal's standard of living.

Scientific, Ethical, and Economic Aspects of Farm Animal Welfare

That's the title of a new report put out by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.  Nicole Widmar and I helped contribute to the section on economics.  

A lot is covered in a mere 40 pages.  The main section heads include: 

• Roles of Science and Ethics in Evaluating, Understanding, and Improving Animal Welfare
• Economics and Markets for Animal Welfare
• Regulation of Animal Welfare
• Assessment of Welfare
• Advances in Animal Welfare and Outstanding Challenges
• Emerging Topics
• Future Neets

It’s an honor to join such a prestigious group of scientists in pulling together this multidisciplinary report.