RIRDC Chicken EMS Training Package   back to Poultry projects

The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation wish to produce a training package that will assist meat chicken producers by increasing their knowledge of environmental issues, improve their ability to minimise or manage environmental impacts, enhance their ability to interpret basic environmental monitoring results and enable them to produce a meaningful draft environmental management plan.

RIRDC Meat Chicken Program had previously funded two separate projects:

• A National EMS for the Meat Chicken Industry (Principal Investigator: Eugene McGahan) and,
• Environmental Database for the Intensive Meat Chicken Industry (FSA Environmental: project partner).

These projects had produced valuable information for meat chicken producers on environmental issues relevant to their industry. Industry organisations, including the Queensland Chicken Growers Association (QCGA) and the Australian Chicken Growers Council (ACGC) have been proactive in highlighting environmental management issues to their members.

The aim of this new package was to take the information gathered in these recently completed projects and develop it into a training and assessment package for producers.

The methodology successfully implemented in the package design was:

1. Investigate, plan and develop a training package including general environmental issues associated with chicken meat production, environmental management plans, environmental risk assessment and any monitoring, interpreting and reporting. The training materials were built on the RIRDC project “A National Environmental Management System for the Meat Chicken Industry”.
2. Trial the package with producers and identified facilitators from at least three states. This was particularly successful as the training package was trailed with industry representatives to raise awareness of its existence and benefits.
3. Refine, edit and layout workbook “master copies” for facilitators and producers.
4. Recommend best-bet methods for facilitating on-site audit processes for meat chicken farms.
5. Prepare a final report for the project.