Whether it’s between two buns, cooked in a tandoor, mixed in a salad or a regulation bachelor’s handbag, Aussies love to eat a cooked chook.
Last year, the average Australian consumed more than 50 kilograms of chicken meat.
For most of us, it works out at two chicken-based meals each week.
That’s about 10 kilograms a year more, per person, than our friends across the ditch in New Zealand.
And almost double what the typical Aussie was eating in the middle of last century.
So why are Australians so obsessed with chicken, and how sustainable is it for our food future?
How chicken became an Aussie staple
Food historian Lauren Samuelsson, who has written a PhD thesis on the influence of The Women’s Weekly on Australia’s food scene, points to a collision of cost and culture as the main drivers.
“During World War II, prices were capped to stop overinflation of goods — a pound of steak was about a sixpence, for chicken it was about four times as much,” the University of Wollongong academic says.
That was a time when most chickens roamed in backyards and tended to be valued more for their egg-laying abilities.
The idea of having protein day in, day out was typically more attractive than a one-time-only offering of meat.
“Up until about the 1960s, early 1970s, chicken really was not an everyday meat. It was a special occasion food, because of its price — it was incredibly expensive,” Samuelsson says.
The Australian Women’s Weekly Chicken Cookbook, published in 1973. (Australian Women’s Weekly)
It’s a far cry from today, when the major supermarkets are likely to be offering chicken breasts for about $11 per kilo and steak for closer to $50 per kilo.
“It’s totally flipped,” she says.
“We changed those chicken farming practices, so chicken became more plentiful. And because there was more around it, [that] made the price drop, which is appealing to people.”
Samuelsson said the change in farming systems coincided with a change in the way we were eating.
“Instead of having our meat and three veg, which was sort of the standard meal pattern, we started to eat new and different foods,” she says.
“We started to eat a lot more Asian foods … which chicken fit into really well, it’s sort of like a blank canvas as a flavour. Lamb has quite a distinct flavour, but chicken doesn’t.
“And so changing practices of what we were eating culturally really changed the way that we looked at this meat.”
So common and affordable has chicken become that Samuelsson says her husband refuses to order it when he is dining in a restaurant.
“He says no, he can cook that at home!”
There’s big money in the bachelor’s handbag
The rise of chicken in Australia is staggering.
At a retail level, Australians are now spending more than $8 billion a year on chicken meat.
For retail giant Coles, which in 2024 recorded a profit of more than $1.1 billion, the roast chook makes the list of top three most sold grocery items.
Competitor Woolworths sold more than 20 million roast chickens in 2023.
Australians have branched out from the classic roast, and now spend close to $9 billion a year on chicken meat. (ABC News: Edwina Seselja)
Chicken is big business in the fast food industry, too.
McDonalds Australia sold 20 million kilograms of chicken in its nuggets and McChicken burgers in 2023.
While many people credit the arrival of Colonel Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia for jump-starting our obsession with the white meat, home cooking makes up the bulk of the sales.
KFC arrived in the 1960s, heralding a decades-long affinity for takeaway chicken. (ABC Archive)
In its financial reporting, Inghams noted rising cost-of-living pressures had meant more people were eating at home, and that was slowing demand at fast food outlets.
As one of the major processors of chicken meat in the country, Inghams produced more than 405 kilotonnes of poultry in 2023, recording a net profit (after tax) of $101.5 million — up 68 per cent year-on-year.
Australians are world leaders in chicken consumption
If you’re selling chicken meat, Australia is clearly a great place to do it.
The United States Department of Agriculture estimates around 103 million tonnes of chicken meat is produced around the world each year. That figure has risen by roughly 18 per cent over the past decade.
It estimates Australians eat 1.3 per cent of that chicken — despite accounting for less than 0.35 per cent of the global population.
According to Mary Wu, from the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, the Australian demand for the bird has remained relatively steady since the 1960s.
“We’ve increased our production to meet consumer demand, and that consumer demand has [risen] by about 2.5 per cent on an annual basis,” she says.
Few other agricultural commodities could boast such consistent growth.
The Australian government’s commodity forecasters anticipate it will continue, expecting that by the end of this decade, we’ll each be consuming 52 kilograms of chicken meat each year.
Dr Wu says consumption has increased steadily over many years. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
Dr Wu, who this year launched an industry sustainability framework at Parliament House in Canberra, says Australians already eat almost twice as much chicken as the next-highest-consumed protein, which is pork.
(Side note: readers inclined to mix the two meats will find countless recipes on Instagram for preparing a Bresse chicken in a pig’s bladder.)
“If you look at the last quarter of a century, chicken meat has been really stable in our price offering and has consistently been below the RBA target inflation rate,” she says.
“Chicken has only grown at around 1.3 per cent per annum from a [retail] price perspective, it’s been very friendly to the consumer.”
Compared to other sources of meat, the price of chicken is low. (ABC News: Mary-Louise Vince)
Joanne Sillince from the Australian Chicken Growers’ Council says price and versatility make chicken an obvious choice for consumers.
“It is the least expensive of the meats you can get. So you can get drumsticks for $6 to $7 per kilogram,” Dr Sillince says.
“Secondly, it’s an incredibly versatile meat. You can put it with anything. You can curry it, boil it, poach it, roast it — you name it.”
How sustainable is the chicken industry?
One reason the price of chicken has stayed low, relative to other foods, is the speed at which it can be produced.
The RSPCA’s Talulah Gaunt says about 700 million meat chickens were raised and slaughtered In Australia in 2023.
“Globally, all meat chickens that are commercially bred will live for about four to five weeks, and that’s the same for an RSPCA-approved chicken,” Ms Gaunt says.
The RSPCA sets out 400 requirements for welfare conditions for chickens bred for meat. (Supplied: Australian Chicken Meat Federation)
Ms Gaunt oversees the RSPCA’s scheme, which was established in 2010, setting out 400 requirements relating to welfare conditions for meat chickens.
Today, around 90 per cent of Australia’s chicken producers are certified by the RSPCA — a figure the chicken meat industry expects to increase in coming years.
“Meat chickens in Australia are raised in quite large, environmentally controlled sheds, so predominantly all of their life, they are indoors,” Ms Gaunt says.
“When they meet RSPCA-approved standards, we’re really focused on having an environment that meets their physical and mental needs. So they need to be comfortable, safe, but they are also encouraged to exhibit all their normal behaviours — scratching, foraging, flapping their wings, perching.”
The welfare accreditation is widely spruiked by the industry in the inaugural “sustainability framework” developed by the government and industry-funded group Agri-Futures.
That document also talks up the emissions credentials of chicken, which produces 3.8 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of their carcass weight — much lower than longer-living, larger animals.
According to the Agri-Futures sustainability framework, Australian chicken meat has a bright future.
However, there are warnings from the other side of the globe that pricing may need a rethink if the industry is to remain sustainable.
A few years ago, the founder of British food company Two Sisters Food Group issued a statement calling for transparent pricing in the sector, arguing food had become too cheap.
Ranjit Singh Boparan’s business, which operated 600 farms and 16 factories, was employing 18,000 people at the time.
“Food is too cheap, there’s no point avoiding the issue. In relative terms, a chicken today is cheaper to buy than it was 20 years ago,” he said in October 2021.
“How can it be right that a whole chicken costs less than a pint of beer? You’re looking at a different world from now on, where the shopper pays more.
“I want to be one of the first to face into a crisis that’s not going away and solve it.”
Today, a rotisserie chicken sold at Australian supermarkets retails for about $12 — a pint of beer is roughly the same.
What that says about the cost of living, we’ll leave to the shoppers.
But for now, it’s clear that this is Australia’s golden era for eating chicken meat.
