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Ep. 14 Tri-SoMe CHICKEN: Mapping resilience in the UK broiler machine
75 Plays29 days ago
In this episode, hosts Tom Willings and Tom Woolman speak with Dr Paul Hurley (University of Southampton) and Dr Pippa Simmons (University of Gloucestershire) about Tri-SoMe CHICKEN — a three-year, UKRI-funded project examining the resilience of the UK’s chicken meat system. With chicken now accounting for around half of UK meat consumption, the team argues that understanding where the broiler sector bends or breaks under pressure is a national food-security question, not a niche academic exercise.
What sets this project apart is its “socio-metabolic” lens. Rather than model only physical supply-chain flows, the researchers are mapping how materials, practices, power dynamics and consumer behaviours interact across a tightly integrated system — from genetics and feed to processing, retail and what ends up on the plate. The work is being built with extensive industry input so the outputs are practical, not theoretical.
Where the system is most exposed
- Disease and biosecurity — Avian influenza remains a first-order risk and the team is linking with parallel AI research to avoid duplication and widen the view.
- Climate shocks — 2022’s extreme heat is a case study. Beyond shed environments, prolonged temperatures over 40°C challenge cold-chain reliability and plant operations. The question is whether current infrastructure and incentives are ready for more frequent, hotter events.
- Feed markets — The system is optimised around soy. Geopolitics and trade shifts since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have pushed input prices higher and re-routed global flows (e.g., China sourcing more from Brazil). As a relatively small buyer, the UK’s access and pricing remain vulnerable.
- Just-in-time fragility — High efficiency and vertical integration are strengths — until a single dependency fails. The 2022 CO₂ shortage, intertwined with gas and fertiliser markets, showed how quickly plant-level stunning capacity can become a bottleneck with immediate welfare consequences on farm.
Public perception vs production reality
New to broilers after work on cattle and sheep, Simmons highlights a deeper public disconnect with chicken than other species — few outside the sector grasp the separation of meat and egg lines, or how changes such as down-stocking from 38 kg/m² to 30 kg/m² ripple into carbon footprint, costs and throughput. Better dialogue is needed so welfare, sustainability and affordability trade-offs are understood, not assumed.
What ‘good’ could look like
The team is not writing another prescriptive standard. Instead, they are developing a flexible ethical framework — a set of principles stakeholders can use to weigh options when shocks hit or when policy and market changes tweak the system. Crucially, that means enabling long-term investment in resilience (heat-hardening sheds, stronger cold chains, alternative feed strategies) at a time when financial pressure pushes operators to think quarter-to-quarter.
Call for farmer input
A major workstream now underway is interviewing broiler farmers across geographies and systems — including different litter, energy, and waste strategies — to capture what resilience looks like in everyday practice. If you run broilers and are willing to contribute, contact details are in the show notes and on the Poultry.Network episode page.
Trade-offs for a Resilient Broiler Sector – An Industry Stakeholder Workshop SAVE THE DATE: 23 October 2025 10:00-16:00 Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre, Birmingham, B15 2RS. Email to register: resilient.chicken@soton.ac.uk
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Podcast Subscription
00:00:16
Tom Willings
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Poultry Network podcast. My name is Tom Willings.
00:00:21
Tom Woolman
And I'm Tom Woolman.
00:00:23
Tom Willings
and We should start the episode, and we're always reminded that you can subscribe to the podcast via the Poultry Network website or wherever you choose to um to to go and source your podcast. We'd love to have you along for every episode.
Meet the Guests: Paul Hurley and Pippa Simmons
00:00:38
Tom Willings
and Today, we are joined by a couple of guests I'm going to introduce in a moment, but they are researching what can only be described as a monumental podcast. research project, including a whole host of industry partners that many of you will be familiar with, all focused on chicken meat, the broiler broiler industry, on the basis that chicken is the the UK's most favourite meat, 50% of meat
00:01:05
Tom Willings
Consumption in the country is chicken, it's and as I say, it's on our plates more often than anything. The chicken industry represents an enormous amount of ah diversity in in operations nationally and internationally.
00:01:20
Paul Hurley
Thank you.
00:01:24
Tom Willings
It's an incredible system, a food system. But like any big system, it has pressures, it has pressure points, whether that's climate change or global trade shocks, um health and welfare issues, environmental concerns, um all challenges to resilience.
00:01:47
Tom Willings
And our guests today from the universities of Southampton, and Gloucester, Paul Hurley and Pippa Simmons respectively, aim to unpack the challenges to resilience with a very different perspective.
Project Overview: 'Try Some Chicken'
00:02:03
Tom Willings
So without further ado, let's introduce Paul and Pippa and the project called Try Some Chicken.
00:02:12
Tom Woolman
Which is a great title.
00:02:12
Tom Willings
Paul.
00:02:14
Tom Woolman
Could I just ask how you came up with Try Some Chicken? Because it sounds like like an advert and and presumably most of your your academic research is is not always sounding like an advert.
00:02:26
Tom Woolman
But but yes, how how did you come up with the ah with the with the name for the project?
00:02:31
Paul Hurley
Well, neither of us can take credit for that. That was our colleague Emma Rowe, who's leading the project at Southampton. And then so the the project is funded as part of a ah yeah UK government funded program for UK research innovation about resilience of the UK food system.
00:02:50
Paul Hurley
And so ah Emma and and some of us put together ah proposal for this project, which is a three year project. and then And that the long title is Towards Resilient Industrial Sociometabolics of Chicken.
00:03:05
Paul Hurley
an academic research project like snazzy acronym and and i think Emma has a bit of sense of humour so we came up with we worked out that try some chicken would would work with those those long academic words so yeah try some chicken which which feels quite snappy we've also got the got the other other name of resilient chicken and because that the project as I say is all about resilience
00:03:29
Tom Woolman
Okay, so yes, maybe you could start off just by telling us in a bit of a nutshell, if if that is possible, as we said, it's quite it's quite an expansive project, but in in simple layman's terms, what's the project trying to find out?
Resilience in the Food System
00:03:45
Pippa Simmonds
Yeah, so um I suppose it's within this broader context that we're facing at the moment of poly crisis, basically, that's really increased the focus on resilience and specifically on resilience in the food system.
00:03:54
Paul Hurley
Thank you.
00:03:57
Pippa Simmonds
Obviously, early this year, we had um the National Preparedness Commission publish that report by Tim Lang, which was looking at um civil food resilience. So thinking about if there is a big shock to the system, what does that mean for ordinary people?
00:04:12
Pippa Simmonds
And it's within that sort of context and those increased that increased attention to food security that this project has started. And we're very much looking at um food system resilience through the lens of the broiler chicken sector.
Geography and Industry Collaboration
00:04:27
Pippa Simmonds
So we're doing that as um quite a big team. um The bulk of the academics in the team are ah geographers or we're geography adjacent. So we've got that sort of perspective of being good at mapping things, but not just mapping things spatially,
00:04:41
Pippa Simmonds
um mapping different materials as they move through the system, mapping power dynamics and things like that, and kind of looking at things with that really big picture perspective.
00:04:54
Pippa Simmonds
um We've also got um partners from industry, which has really been really helpful because for a lot of us, this is our first time researching broiler chickens. So we're learning a huge amount and they've really helped give us that baseline knowledge and often giving us a reality check when they need to.
Supply Chain Dynamics
00:05:11
Tom Woolman
No, I think that's quite useful.
00:05:12
Tom Willings
Thank you.
00:05:12
Tom Woolman
and I think it's a very interesting project because one of the strengths of the poultry meat sector is that um is that um you have large companies, I suppose, that are able to to um manage the whole supply chain and you have vertically integrated supply chains where um yeah ah costs ah ah are able to be managed as closely as possible and you have the right supply and demand.
00:05:26
Paul Hurley
you
00:05:37
Tom Woolman
So your supply chain is is working really well. um But ultimately, it does leave you open as well. um if things if if you do have issues that there aren't always lots of other people that can jump in and and and fill that production.
00:05:51
Tom Woolman
um
00:05:53
Pippa Simmonds
Yes, exactly.
00:05:53
Tom Willings
I think the thing that that that strikes me that's different about this project, because there will have been um an awful lot of research into how to make chicken, probably from a production point of view, more sustainable, um whether that's um you know resilience to climate change or or resilience in improving the impact on climate change of production, health, welfare,
00:05:53
Tom Woolman
Tom?
Socio-economic Impact of Chicken
00:06:15
Tom Willings
etc.
00:06:16
Tom Willings
All things that we've already mentioned. um ah But you're looking at things from the other end of the telescope as well on the socio and economic side of things. and And the first thing that comes to my mind is that chicken is, as we've already said, it's cheap and it's ubiquitous. it'ss It's everywhere. And many of those other issues facing the chicken production industry are arguably a byproduct of being just that cheap and ubiquitous.
00:06:44
Tom Willings
um But at the same time, if you're you're looking, your research looks at from the perspective of a food bank user, um you know, or for um you know a consumer for whom price sensitivity cost is of paramount importance. And I wonder what your early thoughts, findings are in and how you kind of square that circle.
00:07:06
Paul Hurley
Yeah, I think we're, yeah,
00:07:09
Paul Hurley
we're thinking about or trying to think about resilience in all of these dimensions, as you say, the sort of social as well as the um economic and the kind of supply chain. So,
00:07:21
Paul Hurley
The project, this funding call that the project is working under has also funded, think, four or five other projects and they're looking at kind modelling the supply chain stuff like that to think about UK food system resilience. and But we're taking this kind of socio what we're calling a socio metabolic approach. So thinking about yeah all of not just what happens if there's a shock in the supply chain, or whether that's climate change or a war event or civil unrest or something because of prices. It's like if any of those things happen, know, what,
00:07:56
Paul Hurley
It's not just whether if something stops or starts. It's like, OK, the quality of the chicken, you know, it' so the best chicken commitment, for instance, that's happened recently. That's that's changed and how how farmers can supply or how much they can supply quantities. And then how's that coming through to what's being processed?
00:08:15
Paul Hurley
And how's that coming through to what people are eating? You know, because only some of us are eating like a whole chicken on a Sunday. yeah But all of those other chicken products, what's going into those? Who's eating what and how much are they eating? and Those kinds of things are trying to sort of get into the complexities that or thinking about, you know, things like waste and pollution. And if there are those kind of shifts in whether that's the feed or some of the nutrients coming into the feed or the breeding, you just these small things
00:08:44
Tom Willings
Mm-hmm.
00:08:44
Paul Hurley
I'm doing this little tweaking kind of a hand gestures that, but you know, these small tweaks can have kind of big impacts further along. So we're trying to get this picture of this whole thing. So thinking of resilience across all of these tweaks and all of these like kind of flexible things just to think in the future, OK, what happens when we've got this.
00:09:04
Paul Hurley
is this protein that is very ubiquitous, very healthy, very cheap, you know, in ways, you know, much more sustainable than other animal proteins, much healthier than a lot of animal, ah other animal proteins.
00:09:16
Paul Hurley
But, you know, what happens when we when we tweak that system or when we have, we're forced to tweak that system?
Major Risks to Chicken Industry
00:09:21
Tom Woolman
and And what are some of the shocks that you've identified, some of the main shocks that you've identified so far um to to the to the system? um i'm I'm thinking avian influenza is something that people are talking about a lot at the moment um that that that still is is looking like it's it's going to be a pretty big threat for the next couple of years, certainly. But um yeah what other things have have you identified?
00:09:44
Paul Hurley
Thank you.
00:09:45
Pippa Simmonds
Yeah, we've um talked a lot with stakeholders about AI and that's, as you say, likely going to be a big risk this year. There's obviously been a lot of work by other research projects. We've linked up with other researchers who are doing things in that area.
00:09:59
Pippa Simmonds
And so we're sort of and going a bit beyond that to look at some of the the other shocks that are that are out there. um So I'll just mention a couple of major ones. So we've paid a lot of attention to extreme heat,
00:10:12
Pippa Simmonds
And we particularly heard a lot of stories about what happened in summer 2022 and the potential risks going forward as heat waves like that become more frequent and hotter and whether ah infrastructure is really prepared for that, both in terms of the sheds themselves, whether they can cope with these really high temperatures, but also whether the supply chain could cope with that. Because when you get over 40 degrees, you know, you get refrigerators failing.
00:10:37
Pippa Simmonds
What that means in terms of the factories and what that means in terms of storage, Obviously, ah you know, there's obviously big implications there and not a lot of motivation within the current way things are structured to address those, um you know, less frequent events.
00:10:53
Pippa Simmonds
And we've we've obviously had a hot summer, but it's, you know, it's not been to that same scale that we saw, but, you know, we all know that it it is coming. um I think another big thing, one of our colleagues has been really looking into chicken feed and where chicken feed comes from and looking at soy.
00:11:10
Pippa Simmonds
And that's something that, as we know, is very impacted by following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Um, and the price of feed inputs really shot up and, and has, you know, remained relatively expensive since.
00:11:27
Pippa Simmonds
And that, um, you know, the system is so optimised around soy as a component of the feed to deliver that um to deliver that protein in such a digestible way. What happens if things do shift? And they are shifting, you know, we're seeing that China is sourcing a higher proportion of its soy from Brazil rather than from the US.
00:11:46
Pippa Simmonds
And with us as a relatively small player in in that sort of global picture, what does that mean in terms of what we're going to have access to in the years ahead?
Historical Challenges and Supply Chain Implications
00:11:55
Tom Woolman
it's It's funny, 2022 is a year that I guess I think is almost a bit of a casebook in terms of what what could go wrong. um and i And I remember I was working somewhere at the time where um yeah we had the invasion of Ukraine and the gas prices went up.
00:12:10
Tom Woolman
That then impacted the manufacture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and a byproduct of that is CO2. And we use CO2 in the vast majority of factories for controlled atmosphere stunning.
00:12:21
Tom Woolman
um
00:12:22
Pippa Simmonds
Mm-hmm.
00:12:22
Tom Woolman
and And so we were in a situation where we were running chicken factories and we weren't actually sure if we if we were going to have CO2 to actually be able to dispatch the birds. and um and um And you don't have a lot of other options you know when you've built your factory around around that. And when you've got birds on the floor, it's almost like the the the poultry meat sector is um it's ah it's almost taken a ah ah ah leaf out of the Toyota management book. you know Everything is just in time and everything works very efficiently. but um
00:12:50
Tom Willings
Kaizen, isn't it?
00:12:52
Tom Woolman
Exactly.
00:12:52
Tom Willings
Hmm.
00:12:53
Tom Woolman
But that does yeah that means that um that if something does go wrong, you've got to do something about it quite quickly. Yeah.
00:12:59
Pippa Simmonds
And I think that's been a big learning point for us coming as kind of newbies to the sector, just realising the implications of, you know, if you can't get those chickens dispatched, the welfare implications of them staying on farm are really significant.
00:12:59
Paul Hurley
Mm-hmm.
00:13:11
Tom Woolman
No.
00:13:11
Pippa Simmonds
So it's been real learning point
Public Perceptions vs. Industry Realities
00:13:12
Pippa Simmonds
for those of us new to the sector.
00:13:13
Tom Willings
hey Well, wanted to pick up on that point of being new to the sector, Pippa, because in your working group, you've got a lot of people, as I've already mentioned, who will have an enormous amount of very practical poultry production and research um experience. But but as as as new to the industry, are there things that you've uncovered that have surprised you that you would say um you know you you you wouldn't have have expected or you think that the public at large would not have expected?
00:13:42
Tom Willings
And then on the back of that, are you starting to build a picture of what good might look like, what the outturn of the project you know might might might be if this is going to inform government policy in the long term?
00:13:51
Paul Hurley
you
00:13:57
Tom Willings
you know Are there any indications so far of you know what might need to change?
00:14:02
Pippa Simmonds
Shall I answer the first part of that call and then you can come in the second for the difficult bit. um
00:14:07
Tom Woolman
Mm-hmm.
00:14:07
Pippa Simmonds
I'll just speak. um I just speak to my experience personally. So my previous research was to do with cows and sheep. um So I guess the learning curve has been the real difference in what makes um a good livestock farmer with those different animals and the different way that you need to think about it and interact with it.
00:14:27
Pippa Simmonds
Um, so yeah that's been very different. And I think what I've also realised is the way that the public is way more disconnected, I would say from broiler chicken than they are from other farmed animals.
00:14:41
Tom Willings
Mm-hmm.
00:14:41
Pippa Simmonds
Um, there's something about it's because partly because we've moved chicken indoors, people don't see them lot of the time. And for example, I was on the phone to a friend a few weeks ago who was saying, well, I just thought that like, it was whenever,
00:14:55
Pippa Simmonds
hens didn't lay enough, they went off to become meat. And I think a lot of people don't realise that there's these two different breeds serving these different purposes. And I think that's quite, it's quite tricky, isn't it? Because the public perception of what is a healthy and happy and, you know, high welfare chicken in cat can be quite different from what the industry understands based on, you know, the data and their knowledge around um the but what the bird needs, basically.
00:15:24
Pippa Simmonds
So yeah, I would kind of highlight that public disconnect that I think is quite is quite interesting. um
00:15:29
Tom Willings
there'll be many farmers listening to this thinking exactly or agreeing, you know, vehemently with you that if only people knew more about how food was produced and could then distinguish between those that but do an excellent job and and and and others and the opportunity to add value if you can connect the consumer with, with you know, the producer is is endless, isn't it?
00:15:35
Pippa Simmonds
Yeah.
00:15:54
Pippa Simmonds
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:15:55
Tom Woolman
and it But also, I was going to say, yes, but even coming to stuff like, um yeah, ah environmental footprint and and what um what what is the environmental impact of of downstocking birds from 38 kilos, which is the sort of red tractor standard, to the 30 kilos, which is now being widely adopted by by retail.
00:15:55
Tom Willings
Paul, you get that, you get, sorry, Tom, go on.
00:16:14
Tom Woolman
um Yeah, how many how many consumers understand the implications of of giving chickens more space, but actually what that does in terms of yeah the footprint of what so carbon footprint of ah of producing those birds.
Defining Resilience in Broiler Production
00:16:27
Tom Woolman
um So, yes, ah ah Paul, I think we were going to ask you really about what potentially what good might look like um down the line, you know, what's um what would a more resilient broiler production sector look like?
00:16:41
Paul Hurley
It's a very good question. we're um so we've just one year into a three-year project. And then I think we're still working it out, to be honest. I think we're you know we're we're connecting and you know with other ah the researchers, other kind of stakeholders, industry partners. Because one of the things I think that's really struck me, and so you've you've got out of the whole team, you've got the two non-chicken experts here today, suppose. But it's...
00:17:09
Paul Hurley
you know, with some very expert kind of experienced other people on the team. But, you know, my expertise, I suppose, is is kind of making connections across across areas, so across different stakeholders or different industries. And I've done that in lots of different sectors.
00:17:24
Paul Hurley
and But, you know, what struck me is kind of is how fast the broiler industry is uh broiler sector uh and that and that there are so many different stakeholders from you know policymakers farmers integrators feed producers um breeders uh retailers um you know ngos consumers all different types of consumers you know it's it's vast so we're you we've been doing this work to try to both on the project team but also through kind of stakeholder meetings kind of
00:17:55
Paul Hurley
stakeholder meetings bring people together to try to try to kind of bring to the surface what some of these these questions might be that that we need to kind of address in the project but also how how we can kind of work towards finding kind of that that kind of answer to making the system more resilient and how we can find that answer that's going to be useful to everybody because we could, you know, easily just sit in the university and come up with a big policy document and it could be completely useless because we haven't spoken to the right people and we don't know how it's going to be used.
00:18:30
Paul Hurley
and So I think it it has to be something that's that's relevant to people and that's, and yeah, that's that's useful, that know that's kind of understandable, that's kind of
Industry Connections and Ethical Frameworks
00:18:42
Paul Hurley
practicable as well. So it's something that people can use and that the...
00:18:46
Paul Hurley
that's also flexible as well. It it needs to be so we're thinking about a kind of framework, an ethical framework, for instance, but but it can't be something very prescriptive. You know, it's not going to be like a sort welfare standard measurable thing. I think it's going to be a sort of set of principles or or something that we can kind of that will help all of us stakeholders in the system.
00:19:05
Paul Hurley
All of us it can help us all kind of understand a bit more of the complexity and work with that complexity
00:19:13
Paul Hurley
to to kind of bring in that resilience, if that makes sense.
00:19:16
Tom Willings
That does make sense. I think you know that the the mechanism as a whole or the machine as a whole made up of all of the different parts that you've referred to is so, my observation would be, it is so finely tuned to work between geneticists
00:19:31
Paul Hurley
um
00:19:34
Tom Willings
and breeding production right the way through the chain to retail and um or any other methods of of of getting the the food to the consumer in whatever format might that might be in whatever market and this country and and abroad might be that a little change over here, know going back to your dials earlier, a little change over here suddenly knocks into you know very significant consequences and adaptations necessary
00:20:01
Paul Hurley
Thank you.
Importance of Long-term Planning
00:20:03
Tom Willings
over there.
00:20:03
Tom Willings
So I think it'll be really, really interesting project to see develop because it has like any any one change has the the potential to have far reaching effects elsewhere.
00:20:16
Tom Willings
Pippa, were you going to were you going to
00:20:16
Tom Woolman
I've
00:20:19
Pippa Simmonds
yeah Yeah, I um politely raised my hand there.
00:20:20
Tom Willings
Come in.
00:20:22
Pippa Simmonds
Just to add to that, um i um I would say I think at this stage, we can probably say that, like many sectors, one of the difficulties is this ability to think long term and plan long term when you're under financial pressure.
00:20:37
Pippa Simmonds
And things like, you know, improving the shed so they can cope with extreme heat, or investing in better coal storage, things like that, you know, that all costs money. So it's about that ability to plan and that ability to invest, which um I think part of what we're thinking about is what that might look like and how that might be supported.
00:21:00
Tom Willings
And then you're looking to talk to more farmers. You've got an engagement event coming up, but you're also on a recruitment drive. Tell us what who are you looking for? what do you
Recruitment of Broiler Farmers
00:21:10
Tom Willings
need? when when when When and how should people get in touch?
00:21:14
Pippa Simmonds
That's right. Yeah. um so the the piece of work that I'm doing at the moment, I'm ah interviewing broiler farmers and we're trying to speak to people who are doing, a you know, are based all over the country and running different kinds of systems.
00:21:30
Pippa Simmonds
So interested in people who are, yeah, running different systems, disposing of waste in different ways to try and find out at the kind of farm level. what What does resilience look like, really? And how does this all how does this all happen in terms of everyday practices?
00:21:46
Pippa Simmonds
So if people like to get in touch, um I don't know how we can share like emails and things like that, Tom, whether we can put them in the show notes or something, but very happy for people to reach out.
00:21:55
Tom Willings
Yeah, absolutely.
Conclusion and Future Follow-up
00:21:59
Tom Woolman
yeah no well it's a fantastic project because as we so as we said at the beginning chicken is is ubiquitous really it's it's everywhere you know um in the home out in restaurants and and all across the country as well you know when you look out at at the landscape and and and agricultural activity um so the resilience of it is is is is really important and it's and it's and it's i think it's it's it's
00:22:06
Paul Hurley
Thank
00:22:17
Paul Hurley
you.
00:22:24
Tom Woolman
yeah it's really great that you guys have got the courage to to get an enormous project like this that is so important to the to the long-term future of not only the agricultural sector, but also the citizens of the country, food citizens of the country and where people get their food from.
00:22:38
Tom Woolman
And um and you're going to look at it and and hopefully come up with some some interesting insights which are going to help guide us over the over the next few decades. So, yeah, thank you, Paul.
00:22:47
Paul Hurley
you
00:22:48
Tom Woolman
Thank you, Pippa, for joining us. As we said, there will be... and further details on the projects that you could either find um on the University of Southampton Research Project page, or and we'll put some stuff on the on the Poultry Network page as well.
00:23:01
Tom Woolman
um But yeah, it'd be great to get you back at some point as well and as the project progresses and um and and hear how things are going.
00:23:08
Pippa Simmonds
Yeah, we'd love to come back.
00:23:10
Tom Woolman
Great.
00:23:10
Paul Hurley
yeah
00:23:11
Tom Woolman
All right. Thank you both. And yeah, we'll speak again sometime. Thank you.