The project investigates asymmetries of power relations and policy formulations that give rise to corporate concentration in livestock industries using the case study of poultry.

Challenge       

Industrial production of broiler chicken and eggs is seen as an answer to persistent malnutrition and protein requirements in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) amidst urbanisation, economic growth, and dietary transition. Corporate contract farming or industrialised integrated production are becoming dominant forms of meeting such demands. This guidance memo aims to investigate asymmetries of power relations and policy formulations that give rise to corporate concentration in livestock industries using the case study of poultry. In particular we identify the role of global finance and government policy interventions that are significant in shaping highly industrialising poultry production systems. Evidence especially for the role of global finance has been limited so far, due to a lack of transparency from corporate firms. We hope to provide a critical analytical framework to producing evidence that will enable frontline investigators to shed light on the power-sharing practices between international and domestic private and public capital that support industrial production systems and their negative externalities. These include dispossessing farmers through land grabs or control, creating breeding grounds for highly pathogenic diseases, making farmers susceptible to processes of globalisation that exclude or marginalise them in production networks increasingly dominated by rent-seeking corporate actors, exacerbating inequalities of animal source protein access, and an increasing burden of zoonosis on producer countries.

Solution      </