By Ken Opengart, DVM, PhD, DACPV
3 Birds Consulting
Signal Mountain, Tennessee
My introduction to sustainability, and the lens that has shaped how I approach my work, has always been grounded in the oath I took at graduation from veterinary school: to protect animal health and welfare, prevent suffering, conserve animal resources, promote public health and advance medical knowledge.
Sustainability is embedded in that oath, even if I did not fully recognize it early in my career. Its significance became clear as my responsibilities expanded, my experience deepened and I confronted the real-world complexity of our industry.
Entry into sustainability
My more formal professional sustainability journey began in 2007, when the company I was working for, Keystone Foods, launched its first sustainability program and asked me to lead that effort in the US. The responsibility seemed to dovetail well with my other areas of responsibility, including leading live operations and commodity risk management.
At the time, sustainability was not well understood within Keystone or the broader poultry industry. For many, it was confined to a narrow environmental narrative, often reduced to “being green,” and largely disconnected from the broader operational context, trade-offs and consequences that we recognize today.
From the outset, I spent a great deal of time reframing the conversation. I emphasized that sustainability was not something new or abstract but something we were already working on every day, through animal care, food safety, workforce practices, resource stewardship and business continuity. What was changing was not the work itself but how we communicated about it and how intentionally we connected it to outcomes.
My responsibilities expanded globally, and one of my early objectives was enhancing our sustainability culture. Regardless of role or function, my desire was for every employee to understand and be able to articulate how their work contributed to making Keystone more sustainable. Building that shared understanding required investing in enhancing sustainability literacy across the global organization, establishing a common language, clarifying understanding of complex trade-offs and fostering a clear line of sight between individual decisions and broader business outcomes.
Whether someone worked in HR, food safety and quality assurance, operations, accounting or elsewhere in the organization, sustainability had to be tangible, shared and owned, not siloed or assigned to a single department. That literacy was foundational to creating a robust and resilient sustainability culture that could endure beyond programs, reporting cycles or leadership changes.
Demonstrating sustainability
I am immensely proud of the role our poultry industry plays in society, particularly in terms of sustainability.
We feed a growing global population with safe, affordable and high-quality protein through one of the most cost-efficient and sustainable animal agriculture systems in the world. Sustainability in agriculture did not begin when corporations started focusing on it in the early 2000s; it has always been embedded in how we operate. We work continuously to do more with less, reduce waste and build a resilient value chain capable of meeting today’s needs while standing up to tomorrow’s challenges.
The poultry industry has delivered long-standing improvements in many areas of sustainability, yet I have long been frustrated by our inability to articulate our sustainability narrative in a compelling and convincing way.
When people ask, “Are we producing poultry sustainably?” my answer is grounded in data, not defensiveness. Life-cycle assessments and industry benchmarking of US broiler production tell a compelling story, one that is rarely communicated effectively outside our industry.
Over the last 5 decades, the US broiler industry has dramatically reduced its environmental footprint. From 1965 to 2010, water depletion declined by more than 50%, global warming potential by more than 30%, land use by over 70% and fossil-energy use by nearly 40% per kilogram of live weight produced. From 2010 to 2020, we continued to improve, with further reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, water consumption, and land and fossil resource use.1,2
These gains did not happen by accident. They were driven by advances in poultry genetics, nutrition, health management, housing and husbandry, paired with a vertically integrated value chain that allows us to identify inefficiencies and correct them at scale.
Poultry did not just become more sustainable; it became more affordable. Even as input costs rose, chicken remained one of the most accessible proteins for consumers. Food affordability and accessibility are critical, yet often overlooked, dimensions of sustainability.
Focusing sustainability efforts
Sustained progress, however, does not mean the job is done. The next phase of sustainability improvement in poultry is harder and requires honesty about where our biggest opportunities lie.
Life-cycle analyses consistently show that roughly 70% of poultry’s climate impact sits in Scope 3 emissions, which include transportation-related greenhouse gases. Within that, roughly 70% is tied to feed in the form of grain production, feed processing and transport, and feed conversion. That reality narrows the field of viable interventions.
Future progress will not come from a single breakthrough but from a disciplined set of science-based levers applied across the system. It will depend on climate-smart row crops, improved nutrient management, reduced tillage and effective edge-of-field practices. It will also depend on precision nutrition and the thoughtful use of alternative ingredients, such as enzymes, probiotics and phytogenics, and the ability to balance formulating for cost and environmental impact.
Additionally, progress will depend on continued gains in feed conversion and improved health and welfare, as well as rigorous environmental control inside poultry houses, i.e., air quality, temperature, lighting and management.
None of these is a silver bullet. Each may carry trade-offs. Sustainability is not about achieving perfection. Rather, it is about making informed, data-driven decisions that balance outcomes and drive continuous improvement.
Telling the full sustainability story
Admittedly, I fell into the trap of discussing sustainability only in the context of environmental impact. This was not intentional, but it is certainly where I feel most comfortable and get most excited.
To really tell our compelling story, we must speak broadly about our progress. The US Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry and Eggs developed a sustainability framework that measures performance across 101 metrics and 15 core indicators, including animal welfare, environmental impact, labor and food safety. The assessment enables participants to benchmark progress, pinpoint and prioritize areas requiring greater focus, recognize strengths and drive continuous improvement across their organization.
The first-ever sustainability framework report developed for the full US supply chains for chicken, turkey and eggs from producer to final customer was published in 2025.3 This represents an important step toward generating the data and insights needed to communicate our story more effectively and enhance credibility and trust with our stakeholders.
Call to action
So where does that leave us?
If the poultry industry wants sustainability to be understood based on real performance rather than outside interpretation, we must take ownership of our narrative and define how sustainability is executed and communicated. Progress must be grounded in a holistic framework that integrates aspects of sustainability and manages trade-offs transparently, rather than allowing one priority to be sacrificed to satisfy another.
My call to action is this:
If you are a poultry leader, do not chase sustainability commitments that ignore systems-level consequences. Demand holistic assessments before locking in targets. Grow a sustainability culture within your organization where, regardless of function, everyone understands how they contribute to sustainable outcomes for your company.
If you are a veterinarian or welfare professional, advocate for outcome-based measures that let the bird tell us the answer.
If you are a customer or brand, recognize that sustainability is not achieved through prescriptive mandates but by partnering with supply chain partners and driving continuous improvement that is grounded in science.
And if you work in poultry production, take pride in what this industry has accomplished while staying committed to doing better.
Poultry feeds the world efficiently, affordably and responsibly. The challenge ahead is not whether we can be sustainable but whether we are willing to share our story transparently and make decisions that genuinely balance environment, economy and ethics.
That responsibility belongs to all of us.
References
1. Putman B, Thoma G, Burek J, Matlock M. A retrospective analysis of the United States poultry industry: 1965 compared with 2010. Agric. Syst. 2017;157:107-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2017.07.008A
2. Putman B, Thoma G. Broiler Production System Life Cycle Assessment: 2020 Update. 2020. Broiler-Production-System-LCA_2020-Update.pdf
3. 2025-US-RSPE-Framework-Sustainability-Report.pdf
Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
