The sleek, rust-coloured saucer settles into the earth, mirroring the surrounding hills. It looks like an art gallery or a high-end conference centre – an architectural masterpiece designed to sit lightly on the land. The sweeping lines are the gateway to a $600m poultry processing plant that will, at full capacity, process 3 million chickens a week.
Located in Tamworth, 300km north of Sydney, the new facility is owned by Baiada, one of Australia’s two largest chicken producers and the owner of household brand names Steggles and Lilydale Free Range. At its height, two lines will process 15,000 birds an hour as chickens fly through state-of-the-art chilling systems and automated packing machines en route to supermarkets across the state. The new plant will support more than 1,000 jobs, with workers able to spend their lunch breaks at an on-site cafeteria, at a gym or in landscaped gardens.
Jeff Budd, deputy mayor of Tamworth regional council, has toured the facility, which opened last week. He says the unusual design creates a gem for the city and will attract the skilled workers and technicians needed to run kilometres’ worth of conveyor belts and systems. Once you’re inside that main building at the front, it’s like a five-star hotel.” Australians are voracious chicken eaters, consuming an average of 55kg of chicken meat per person per year.
Almost half of all meat eaten in Australia is chicken, and consumption has doubled in the past 30 years. More than 800 million chickens will be slaughtered this financial year to meet the demand. Once fully operational, the Oakburn facility will account for almost 20% of that.
Jed Goodfellow, the director of policy and government relations at the Australian Alliance for Animals, said while the Baiada building may be state of the art, he believes “the welfare model behind it is anything but”. A leading welfare issue, Goodfellow says, is the speed at which meat chickens grow. Those changes must be enacted by 1 January 2031 for businesses to keep their RSPCA certification.
At the same time, the RSPCA has released a new category of “enhanced” welfare standards, which are primarily focused on encouraging producers to rear slower-growing breeds. Most of Australia’s commercial chickens are two fast-growing breeds, the Ross 308 and the Cobb 500, which reach slaughter weight at between four and six weeks of age. Tensen said the RSPCA would ultimately like to see chicken meat producers replace fast-growing breeds with ones associated with higher welfare standards, but consumers would have to help achieve that transition.
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