The RIRDC Chicken Meat Program has been funding research for a number of years aimed at exploring available options and developing tools to assist growers to manage dust and odour impacts. The establishment of vegetative screens (or vegetative environmental buffers [VEBs]) to mitigate shed emissions is one dust and odour mitigation option that warrants consideration, as it has proven to be a viable and successful option overseas.
This report reviews the best available literature on the effectiveness of VEBs in mitigating emissions from chicken farm facilities, and establishes design principles for designing and establishing successful VEBs for meat chicken farms. This information has been used to develop producer guidelines for vegetative buffers on Australian meat chicken farms (Vegetative Environmental Buffers for Australian Poultry Meat Farms: A Guide for Growers) which may be downloaded at https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/items/14-063.