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Who is the broiler chicken?
Broiler chickens (those reared for meat) originated from a cross between red and grey jungle fowl and Rock Line birds. Just like laying hens, broiler chickens are sentient beings who would naturally spend their day foraging for food, scratching the ground looking for insects and seeds, maintaining their plumage condition via dustbathing and preening, and perching in trees to avoid predators.
Worldwide, chicken meat production and consumption continue to increase year on year (in the UK we eat on average 25kg/year – that’s more than 2kg/month), and the broiler chicken industry has grown dramatically in the past 50 years. An estimated 70 billion chickens are slaughtered annually for meat, with over two-thirds being fast-growing breeds raised in barren, overcrowded sheds.
Broiler chickens have an average lifespan of 7 to 8 years, whereas in commercial production they are slaughtered as early as 35 days old, so they do not get to reach adulthood during their lifetime.
Commercial production
Globally, over 70% of meat chickens are raised in industrial farming systems, the large majority in North America, Europe, South America and a rapidly increasing proportion in developing countries, such as China, Brazil and Indonesia.
The problems with intensive chicken production are well documented and include a plethora of health and welfare issues that are associated with fast-growing breeds, a lack of space provision, no access to natural light or enrichment and outdated stunning systems. Standard intensively farmed broiler chickens are reared under high stocking densities in large sheds that are barren except for water and food points. They have increasingly been bred for very fast growth, high meat yield and feed efficiency. This results in lethargic birds who suffer with lameness and poor walking ability. They spend most of their time (85%) sitting doing nothing instead of behaving like chickens who naturally like to perch, peck, forage, scratch and play. Many fast-growing birds suffer from heart defects, organ failure, compromised immune systems, muscle diseases, high rates of leg and foot lesions and musculoskeletal problems. All of this means that most broiler chickens have a poor quality of life from start to finish.
Antibiotics are routinely overused in intensive farm systems to help chickens survive in poor conditions where disease can spread easily. Leading authorities such as the European Medicines Agency and the WHO say that the overuse of antibiotics in farming contributes to higher levels of antibiotic resistance in some human infections.
The quality and nutritional content of intensively farmed chicken meat is also generally poorer than higher welfare chicken and can be affected by ‘white striping’, where fatty deposits are stored in the breast muscle as the bird grows, or ‘wooden breast’, a hardening of the muscle tissue that occurs when tissue cells die due to a lack of oxygen in the fast-growing muscle. Both are known to cause pain and restrict movement in fast growing breeds as well as being unpalatable to consumers.
Discover more about how to provide broiler chickens with a better quality of life below.
