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Chicken consumers expect digital experience, transparency
111 Plays8 months ago
WATT PoultryUSA editor Elizabeth Doughman joins the podcast to share consumer insight and highlights from the 2025 Chicken Marketing Summit.
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Transcript
Introduction to Feed Strategy Podcast
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Hi everyone.
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Welcome to Feed Strategy Podcast.
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I'm your host, Jackie Remke, Editor-in-Chief of Watts Feed Brands.
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This edition of Feed Strategy Podcast is brought to you by FeedStrategy.com.
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FeedStrategy.com is your source for the latest news and leading-edge analysis of the global animal feed industry.
Discussion: Chicken Consumption Trends
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Today we're joined by Liz Duffman,
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editor of What Poultry USA and Poultry Future.
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She's here to discuss the latest chicken consumption trends and how these may impact poultry feed production.
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Hi, Liz.
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Thank you so much for joining us today.
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Thank you so much for having me, Jackie.
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So for those who are not familiar with you and your work, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
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I'm the editor of Watt Poultry USA and Poultry Future, which means that I cover the broad poultry industry, broilers, turkeys, and layers in a variety of formats from print to newsletters to live events.
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And I love that I get to talk to people and learn more about what they're doing and share this with the audience.
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Watt Poultry USA is our print issue that covers the U.S. boiler and turkey industries.
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We go out six times a year.
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And Poultry Future is a weekly newsletter that covers everything that's new and next for the poultry industry.
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And within Poultry Future, we also put out two live events, one focused on chicken marketing and one focused on new technologies within the industry.
Insights from Chicken Marketing Summit
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You were heavily involved with the organization of the 2025 Chicken Marketing Summit.
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For those in the audience who are not familiar with the event, why don't you give us a little bit of information?
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We just held the Chicken Marketing Summit at the end of July this year in Savannah, Georgia, and it had a focus on smart tech and smarter supply.
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This annual conference talks about the latest consumer trends for sales and marketing for people involved in the chicken industry.
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We covered a range of topics of this industry.
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We covered tech trends.
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We talked about how consumer concerns about HPAI or bird flu could impact chicken consumption or chicken sales.
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We always talk about the latest food service and retail trends.
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We have an annual survey where we always present the results.
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We just gave out the 2025 Chicken Marketer of the Year Award.
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It's a really fun, interesting event.
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And I always feel like I know a lot about consumer trends going in.
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And I always realize that there's so much more to learn while I'm at the conference.
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And I come away with some really great takeaways.
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I was fortunate enough to attend last year, and it really is a great event.
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And I did learn a lot about
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the trends in the consumer behavior side of things, which we don't see a whole lot at the conferences I typically attend.
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So I did enjoy that.
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So when you think back at everything that you heard and the discussions you had, what in your opinion were the overarching themes that emerged during the conference?
Impact of Digital Experiences on Poultry Marketing
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There were two really big themes that I saw attending the 2025 Chicken Marketing Summit.
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The first is that consumers now expect a digital experience in all facets of their lives.
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It's not just that we're spending all day on our phones looking at social media.
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We're spending time on our phones looking at
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recipes for chicken on social media, figuring out what we want to cook.
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We're ordering our groceries using apps for the stores.
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We are going to restaurants and using kiosks to figure out what our latest fast food order is.
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And people have been talking about that for a long time, telling us that it's coming and it's finally here.
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And I think that's going to have a major impact on
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how we market and consume chicken going forward.
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The other big theme that I saw was convenience.
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Obviously consumers are very busy these days.
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They want their food to be easy to prepare.
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This means that things like pre-portioned chicken breasts have become very popular.
Transparency in Poultry Production
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You mentioned how everybody is so connected and has all the information
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at their fingertips, how is the transparency going to impact poultry production in the short and long term?
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What do you think about that?
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Obviously, one of the great things about this digital experience is that it makes it easier, or it could make it easier, for consumers to have a very transparent view into how their chicken is produced.
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I think we're going to see a lot more companies doing things like putting barcodes on their products that
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provide insight into how their chickens were raised, what they were fed, all of that information, that whole farm to fork supply chain.
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I think that's absolutely going to become more prevalent.
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I think we're also going to maybe see a change in the way that
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companies are marketing chicken.
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They're not just going to be doing those paper supermarket flyers that we used to get in our newspapers.
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They're going to reach out on social media.
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They're going to create ads.
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They're going to specialize in the way that they're promoting chicken in the grocery stores app, where it can provide you all the information that a consumer is looking for it.
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I think we're going to see a lot more transparency through digital channels going forward.
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And I think that's what consumers are starting to expect.
Consumer Expectations and Misconceptions
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You mentioned the chicken consumption survey.
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What were the key findings that were presented to the audience at CMS?
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A lot of the talk, again, was about digital, how consumers are becoming digital natives, and they're increasingly turning to technology, both in shopping and in meal preparation, because they're thinking about technology.
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They want transparency and animal welfare, sustainability and product safety, and
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This annual survey is commissioned by the National Chicken Council.
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Watt Global Media also sponsors it, and it's conducted by a company called Circona.
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They survey a bunch of U.S. adults to understand how different generations shop for, prepare, and think about fresh chicken as times are changing.
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We've done this survey for several years, and it's fun to track how the results have been changing.
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Now, of the sessions that you attended, were there any unexpected insights that surprised you?
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One of the things that really stuck out with me is that we had a panel discussion where we talked about avian influenza and the
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We had an economist, Brian Ernst, talk about the impact that HBAI has had on the poultry industry, which has obviously been very devastating.
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But one of the things that we talked about that surprised me was the number of people that believed they could get chicken flu from eating cooked chicken.
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According to my notes, 41% of consumers said that they thought this could happen, and 37% of consumers have already started modifying their purchasing habits because of concerns about HBAI.
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And obviously, we know that there's a big gap in consumer education where, you
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Not everyone's growing up on farms.
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Not everyone knows a farmer.
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So there's a big gap between what's actually occurring and what consumers think.
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But I think to me, this really highlights a need for producers to be proactive about educating consumers about
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about what's truly happening with avian influenza and the impact it has on what they consume.
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And before, because we don't want chicken consumption to be negatively impacted with these misconceptions.
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Overall, looking at the trends for poultry consumption and some of these other issues and some of these other issues like HPAI,
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Do you think that any of these will impact feeding strategies of poultry producers moving forward?
Innovations in Poultry Feed
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Consumers are valuing convenience and they're definitely becoming digital first, but they're still thinking about things like transparency, sustainability, and welfare.
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Poultry producers are always going to be looking for feeds that provide high traceability, help them improve their feed conversion ratio, and obviously are high quality and safe to feed their birds.
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The other thing I think we'll see that I'm really excited about is that we'll see a lot of further innovation in feed additives that can act as antibiotic alternatives.
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And we'll also see more interest in ingredients that you don't normally expect to find in poultry feed or that are becoming more popular.
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For example, insects or algae, other things that can help improve that sustainability messaging across the poultry supply chain.
Conclusion and Future Events
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Where can our listeners find in-depth CMS coverage?
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They've got a couple options for information on the conference.
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They can go to chickenmarketingsummit.com.
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But we are covering all of the sessions on wattpoultry.com.
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If you go there and you click on the tab that says Poultry Future, it'll give you all of the content that we've been writing up for about the Chicken Marketing Summit.
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While you're on WAPUltry.com, I'd also encourage listeners to subscribe to our print edition, WAPUltry USA and Poultry International, as well as our newsletters, Poultry Update, Poultry Future, and Egg Industry Insight.
00:10:28
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I know that there certainly is other coverage that would be of interest to the Feed Strategy audience.
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Now, for those who are interested in CMS and potentially attending in the future, do you have any information about the next edition?
00:10:44
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We did.
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We just announced our 2026 event.
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It's going to be held at the Innisfrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Florida.
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on July 27th through the 29th.
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Registration will open in the spring.
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And like I said, if you want more information, you can go to chickenmarketingsummit.com.
00:11:03
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The other thing I'd encourage people to do is to sign up for our event coming up this fall called the Poultry Tech Summit.
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This is scheduled for November at the Atlanta Airport Marriott in Atlanta, Georgia.
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I lovingly describe Poultry Tech Summit as shark tank for poultry innovators.
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And it's really a great opportunity to see those technologies that aren't quite on the market yet for the poultry industry, but they're going to transform how operations are running, how a process is running.
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I always love getting an insight and seeing what people's minds can come up with.
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And this year is especially exciting because we're co-locating with the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry and Eggs because it means that you're going to get two spectacular events in one.
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So if you want to register or find out more about the Poultry Tech Summit, that website is poultrytechsummit.com.
00:12:00
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Excellent.
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Thank you so much, Liz.
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And thanks to everyone for tuning in.