FORTY years ago, when chicken meat was still a luxury, fewer than 8 billion broilers a year were consumed worldwide. This year some 49 billion chickens will reach our tables, while out in the factory farms chickens are being hatched, grown and slaughtered with ever-increasing speed to meet the escalating demand for lean protein and fat profits. There is a hidden cost to this, and it is paid by the chickens themselves.
Three decades ago it took nearly three months to grow a broiler chicken to an average slaughter weight of 2 kilograms. This year, a typical fluffy day-old chick will be ready for slaughter after just 41 days 鈥� and the commercial imperative is to reduce this by a day a year. One wonders where the cut-off point will be. More immediately, where is all this faster growth coming from, and what is it doing to the animals?
For the answers, we need to look not at the notorious confinement practices of industrial 鈥渇actory鈥� farming 鈥� though these do create scandalous welfare problems 鈥� but at a far more insidious practice: extreme selective breeding.
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In recent decades, genetic selection of breeding animals for greater productivity (profit, in other words) has given us dairy cows producing 10 times as much milk as their calves would drink, double-muscled beef cattle so large that Caesarean births are the norm, and chickens growing so fast that their bodies give way under the metabolic strain. Yet because the breeding techniques are labelled 鈥渃onventional鈥�, as opposed to 鈥淕M鈥�, they have so far escaped intense scrutiny. This could be about to change.
Last month, the international campaigning group that I direct, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), brought a case to the High Court in London challenging the UK government鈥檚 policies on broiler farming. Our main goal in the case 鈥� the first judicial review of its kind 鈥� is to end selective breeding of broilers for fast growth. Judgement is due this month.
Why is this case necessary? Let鈥檚 look at the evidence. Chickens reared for meat today are growing twice as fast as they were 30 years ago. They are also being bred from an ever narrowing gene pool: 98 per cent of the world鈥檚 meat chickens are descended from birds supplied by just three companies. These birds grow so quickly and to such a weight that their skeletal structure often gives way, leading to lameness. A recognised method of 鈥済ait-scoring鈥�, in which trained researchers assess the birds鈥� mobility as they move around the shed, reveals that as many as 20 per cent have moderate to severe lameness.
And that means suffering. Research in the UK at the University of Bristol has shown that lame chickens will select feed laced with analgesics, and that ingestion of these painkillers facilitates more normal movement 鈥� both evidence that these chickens are in pain. The high metabolic rate of fast-growing chickens can also put intolerable strain on the cardiovascular system, and a significant proportion of the birds develop the condition known as ascites, which leads to heart failure, oedema of the liver and, eventually, death.
CIWF has filmed both fast-growing and slower-growing birds. There is a striking contrast between a shed full of fast-growing broilers, many struggling to get to feed and water points, and the free-range, slow-growing birds running about on strong legs and even able to fly up into trees to perch.
And the picture gets worse. If the fast-growing chickens are fed normally and not slaughtered young, only about half will survive to one year. To keep chickens alive long enough for them to reach puberty and breed (20 weeks) they have to be raised on a severely restricted diet. With rations down to around 30 per cent of what they would normally eat, the birds are chronically hungry and stressed.
Our legal challenge to all this draws on a European Union directive of 1998, which stipulates no animal should be farmed 鈥渦nless it can reasonably be expected on the basis of its genotype鈥� that it can be kept without detrimental effect on its health or welfare鈥�. The directive also declares that animals should be given enough food to keep them in good health and satisfy their nutritional needs. In the UK, the law goes even further, requiring a diet that promotes 鈥渁 positive state of well-being鈥�.
The farming of fast-growing chickens cannot be squared with such laws. And while our legal challenge focuses on the UK government, its implications are global. A victory in the High Court would send a strong signal to multinational breeding companies that growth rate and the efficiency with which birds turn feed into meat must not be the overwhelming selection criteria. Slower-growing breeds already exist, which can and must be used.
The very least we owe our farmed animals is a fundamentally sound genetic make-up and enough food to avoid near-constant hunger. It is time to ensure that our laws deliver these welfare basics and curb the extremes of selective breeding. Any reluctance to act would be a disaster for chickens 鈥� and, in the long run, a disaster too for our chances of safeguarding farm animal welfare in a future threatened by cloning and genetic engineering.