Moy Park, the Co Tyrone poultry company, is completing a £20 million (€25.4 million) expansion programme which will bring its production up to 750,000 birds a week. Mr Eric Reid, production director, says throughput will reach between 900,000 and one million, as markets develop.

The current development includes the construction of a primary processing plant in Dungannon and a new rendering plant which is a joint venture. One hundred new poultry sheds are being constructed for breeding and the production of free range and organic chickens - some on existing farms and others on new ones.

Moy Park does not rear any birds itself, but contracts some 300 farmers to produce them. Mr Reid says the company is the largest producer of speciality sector chickens - free range, corn-fed and organic - in the UK.

The company has a partnership agreement with Belfast feed compounders, John Thompson and Sons, for the supply of salmonella-free feed and organic feed from its bio-secure manufacturing facility.

Because of the company's health status, some 15 per cent of the breeding stock of western Europe originates in Moy Park.

Moy Park has an annual turnover of £200 million sterling (€316 million) and employs 3,500 people directly, 2,500 of them in Northern Ireland. A further 1,500 people are employed indirectly.