ANALYSIS OF THE POULTRY FLOCKS AT THE LEVEL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Poultry farming, a thousands of years old human occupation, was transformed in the USA in the early 1940's into an industry, when intensive industrial poultry farming was started.. This paper provides a review of the flocks in the European Union, taking into account the increasing number of EU member states from 15 to 25 and then to 27, in the period 2000-2009. Following the processing of the statistical data provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO), it was noticed that at the level of the European Union an increase of 26.6% was registered in the period 2000-2009, but at the level of European Union 15 there was a decrease of 5.3% between 2000-2009, a decrease of 7.5% was registered in the period 2004-2009 at the level European Union 25, while for European Union 27 a decrease of 6.1% was registered between 2007-2009.