Chicken Feed

Fifty BILLION chickens are raised for meat (just for meat, not counting the chickens raised primarily for eggs!) each year, so approximately 136 million are slaughtered each day for meat.

For chickens raised primarily for meat, they are usually ready for the market (i.e. ready for slaughter) after 8 weeks:

When raising meat birds, you’ll find yourself with fast-growing chickens meaning a lot of feed, a lot of poop, and a lot of care. Plus, you will have to say goodbye to these birds after eight short weeks, so be sure you’re ready. Allowing them to live too long is cruel because they get so large so quickly that they’ll actually suffer.

Singapore

Singapore consumes about 36 kg of Chicken per person per year.

So about 3 kg of chicken per month. Assuming each chicken weighs about 1 kg, that's about 3 chickens per month. 

Is that a lot?

Have you eaten your 3 kg of chicken this month?

The World

The Top Three countries (here) consume about 40% of the global consumption of chickens. China with 1.4 billion people is understandable. The US with only a third of China's population, but much richer is a close second. Of course, Brazil being the third largest producer of chicken would naturally also be the third largest consumer of chicken.

The countries with the highest volumes of poultry consumption in 2019 were:

• China (20 million tonnes),
• the US (19 million tonnes) and
• Brazil (12 million tonnes).

[total 40% of global consumption]

These countries were followed by:

• Russia,
• Mexico,
• India,
• Japan,
• Indonesia,
• Iran,
• South Africa,
• Malaysia and
• Myanmar,

Which together accounted for a further 21%.

[Approximately 26 million tonnes.]

So the above list is total weight by country. On a per capita basis, who eats more chicken? A US resident obviously eats more than a Chinese resident. But who's on the top 10 list?

Top 10 poultry meat consumers (kg/per capita)

1. Israel:                                          58.5
2. United States:                             49.8
3. Malaysia:                                    46.7
4. Australia:                                    43.9
5. Brazil:                                         40.6
6. Argentina:                                  40.4
7. Saudi Arabia:                             40.0
8. New Zealand:                            37.4
9. Chile:                                         36.1
10. South Africa:                              36.1

Source: OECD FAO Agricultural Outlook 2018-2027, 2018 estimates.

Surprisingly, Israel tops the list. Consuming more per capita than even the US. 

Even more surprisingly, Malaysia is third, with 46.7 kg per person. That on average more than 10 kg per person more than Singapore. Malaysians really love their chicken.

And their government subsidy/price control really makes chicken affordable for Malaysians. Or maybe, if you make it cheap, the people will buy more of it?

This is a "chicken or the egg" kinda thing? 

Anyway...

Singapore - the broader picture (from SFA, "Singapore's Food Statistics, 2021", pg 6)

In 2021, one person in Singapore consumed an average of around 390 eggs, 100 kg of vegetables, 22 kg of seafood, 62 kg of meat (i.e. chicken, pork, beef, mutton) and 76 kg of fruits.

I really do not know if I consumed 390 eggs in a year. But of course, it's not just eggs as you consume at Ya Kun. You might consume it is cakes, noodles/pasta, curry puffs (Old Chang Kee), etc. 

So, it might come up to 390 eggs.

For chicken, which is the question of the day/month with Malaysia suspending export of fresh chickens to Singapore to first serve their domestic appetite, Singapore has also considered lab-grown chicken, and is the first in the world to approve lab-grown meat to be served commercially. We need to consider any options. Even if it is currently expensive, and still has some ways to go to be commercially viable. If you wanna be cynical about it, the cultivated chicken is more like chicken nuggets. You're not going to be able to make the classic Hainanese Chicken Rice from it. 

And maybe in a short while, we'll have cultivated quail.

The Business Operations Manager of Vow, the company producing this cultivated quail says, "what you need to know about it is it’s really damn good”. 

Probably tastes like chicken.