THE Warwick region stands poised to become a centre for chicken meat production with a major broiler farm close to approval on the former Danpork site at Pratten.

Southern Downs councillors at tomorrow's Planning and Development Committee meeting will vote on a plan by the South Toolburra group to develop a 416,000-bird operation on the Leyburn-Cunningham Rd, which attracted a swag of objections.

But it won't all be plain sailing if the proposal gets the final tick at next week's general council meeting, with council officers recommending no less than 40 conditions and 192 put up by State Government agencies.

South Toolburra reduced the scale of its original application, which was for growing sheds on two massive concrete pads capable of housing up to 676,000 birds at any one time.

Instead, the plan is for one pad with eight sheds with a total floor area of 21,800sq m, with each shed having a maximum capacity of 52,000 birds.

The operation will involve bringing one- to two-day-old chicks onto the facility and transporting them to processing plants when they reach marketable size.

At full capacity, the South Toolburra sheds would grow a staggering 3.7 million meat chickens per year, with two managers living on site.

A State Government report several years ago identified rural areas around Warwick as highly preferable for meat chicken growing, due to water availability and proximity to metropolitan processing and distribution facilities.

But neighbouring Pratten and other objectors took a different view when the South Toolburra proposal was publicly advertised earlier this year, with 17 submissions received by the council.

A common ground of objection was a concern about the impact of waste material from the broiler plant polluting the nearby Condamine River and underground water reserves.

Other potentially negative impacts raised by submitters included odour, diseases such as bird flu from what one landowner described as a "toxic industry", and heavy vehicle movements.

A separate broiler farm with a capacity to grow 1.6 million birds at a time planned for Elbow Valley remains the subject of a legal battle between the council and applicant the Carr Farming Trust over conditions and the size of the operation.

Meaty plan

45 vehicle trips per week to and from site

Bore water supply, sheds located 1.7km from Condamine River