The true cost of cheap chicken

In a tiny space a battery chicken has 40 days to live before it is slaughtered and sold for £2.50 in a supermarket
By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Published: 04 January 2008

A covertly filmed video of factory-farmed chickens struggling to walk and enduring distressing and unnatural conditions is set to ignite a growing campaign to improve the lives of Britain's 800 million "broiler" chickens.

The animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) shot the film at a farm which supplies meat to the country's leading supermarkets to illustrate the grim life inside chicken "coops" designed for 25,000 to 50,000 birds.

video: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_b ... 307570.ece

The grainy video footage shows what looks like a white carpet of thousands of birds shuffling round aimlessly in a dimly lit shed. Some are limping or lifeless. Outside are dustbins stuffed full of dead chicks.

Although their final destination is unknown, the birds were bought by a company which supplies more than 80 per cent of McDonald's chicken nuggets, as well as Morrisons and Sainsbury's.

Last night the company, Sun Valley Foods, of Hereford, announced an investigation into conditions at Uphampton Farm in nearby Leominster.

The footage was released to The Independent amid a wave of concern at the treatment of factory-farmed animals in Britain.

This week, the RSPCA called on supermarkets to stop selling mass-produced standard chickens, whose lives are short, featureless and often racked with pain.

Next week, on Channel 4, the chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver will seek to show the ugly reality of cheap chicken and call on supermarkets to improve their conditions, and the public to choose free-range or organic birds.

About 855 million chickens are slaughtered for meat annually in the UK, but as well as being the most popular meat, chicken is the subject of most welfare concern. The majority of birds – about 95 per cent – are kept indoors, packed densely into vast sheds in what academics and campaigners say are clearly harmful conditions.

Research has found that 27 per cent of these standard chickens have significant or serious walking difficulties because their legs cannot support their abnormally large bodies genetically bred for meat.

Many also suffer burns to the legs because they are standing on sawdust soaked with urine that is only changed every six weeks.

One in 20 birds dies from sudden death syndrome, usually caused by respiratory or heart failure.

CIWF visited Uphampton Farm because its chicks are supplied by Aviagen, one of the three main breeding companies in the world.

During the visits in October and November, activists found many birds in distress. One, seeking to move away from the cameraman, staggered six steps before collapsing. After getting up, it made seven more awkward steps before collapsing again. Several others were reluctant to move when their natural response would have been to do so.

Lesley Lambert, director of research at CIWF, said: "That level of lameness is usually associated with pain. It's quite possible that the birds were in chronic pain.

"There was at least one dead bird on the floor. There was a dusty atmosphere with high levels of excreta."

Ed Roberts, whose son Jonathan runs Uphampton Farm, denied there was a problem with lameness and said mortality rarely exceeded 3 per cent. He said all inquiries should be dealt with by Sun Valley Food, one of the big players in the £2bn-a-year British chicken business.

Sun Valley said it tookits responsibilities for animal welfare very seriously and announced an investigation into conditions shown in the video.

CIWF, however, said conditions at the farm were typical for a large chicken shed and represented a true picture of the state of the industry. These birds are kept indoors for all of their lives, generally little more than a month. They are slaughtered at 39 to 42 days, compared with 56 days for free-range birds and 80 days for organic birds.

Organic birds are allowed to roam free and have perches and other chances to exhibit natural behaviour. However they are three times more expensive than standard chickens.

In three daily one-hour programmes from Monday, Fearnley-Whittingstall will reveal the results of an experiment to show the difference between high and low welfare chicken systems. He divided a shed in two, rearing 1,500 free-range chickens on one side and 2,500 indoor chickens on the other.

Fearnley-Whittingstall said: "We basically want to change the way a chicken is produced in Britain. We think the more people understand, the more they'll be inclined to upgrade the welfare of the birds that they do buy."

The British Poultry Council, which represents the chicken industry, denied that birds were necessarily better off in free-range or organic systems and said it did care about the welfare of birds.

Its chief executive. Peter Bradnock, said, however, that customers were more concerned about price and food safety than welfare. He said: "This whole idea that the industry is dark, brutal and uncaring is rubbish.

"The people who are producing these chickens are producing them to what the market wants. All of these production systems are available to consumers and are clearly labelled. There is no subterfuge."

Frankly, I dont feel much empathy for chickens.

40 days is fucking appalling. I'll have to remind myself of this next time I wants a chicken schnitzel.

and therein lies the purpose of the thread. not, mind you, to try to discourage people from eating chicken, because i don't think it's anyones place to push their beliefs on others in that manner. though i don't eat it myself. but if more people demanded better conditions for the food they eat during its lifetime, free range and organic could become the norm (or at least garner a greater market share), which is a positive outcome for chickens.

of course, the conditions chickens are kept in, abysmal and torturous as they can be, don't rate compared to most people's hip pockets. i'm curious as to what extent education about these conditions can change that behaviour.

I'll give up meat one day, it is really a matter of time. My family has never eaten meat at home and when I go for long periods without (like 2 months), I simply don't miss it.

I do see it as a moral issue though I'm not sure why. All consumption of food involves the taking of life. I'm not certain that any one life is worth more than another, but that is a reductio ad absurdum for most people and leads to the unacceptable conclusion that human life isn't worth anything more than an ant's. Existentially, I'm fairly sure this is correct, though I can't propound this view much in public for I greatly wish to spare myself from being lynched.

But coming back to the point, given this doubt I have about the relative value of living beings, I am not sure why the killing of animals for food troubles me. But it does.

:shrugs:

you actually believe this stuff?

You talkin' to me or Laura?

i've come to the conclusion, and it's one which i may revise in future, that it is because of the intellectual capability of humans as distinct from other animals. put simply, we can emphasise with their suffering, and have the ability to make an alternate choice (i.e. eat vegetables instead), which other animals lack.

I went total vegetarian, almost vegan, for a couple of years in my late teens.

I gave it up though...I just fucking LOVE meat.

I think it was more about being impressionable and trying to fit in with a scene in which it was totally heinous to be anything but vegan/strict vegetarian - guys who listened to Propoghandi etc.

This is why I make an effort to understand your points of view. People who think they have it all worked out are about as interesting as watching grass grow.


Pssst... I think you mean empathise rather than emphasise, ya?

yes, i did. i think i made a typo there and firefox corrected it to the wrong word... i swear!

The Ogalo Portuguese Chicken shop around the corner from my work charges me 10 bucks for a quarter chicken meal. For 10 bucks, it better not be this shitty battery stuff.

Have no idea where my hospital cafeteria sources the chicken they get. But it's a solid feed for 4.50, on the occassions when I do feel like having hospital kitchen food.

Which hospital is this, Hinnmeister?

Stores here have a choice between 'normal' meat and 'biological'. The last one is more expensive, but the animals are treated better. I wish they only had the good kind. When it's really expensive I just buy less, or use less by putting half of it in the freezer for another time.

groetjes,
Mirella

p.s.: what happened to my avatar?!? I did not change it...

This is why I love RM.

i think it's more complex than that.

...

i lack intellectual capacity this morning. let me drink this coffee and see if i can come up with something.

as i said, that's it "put simply".

Only as long as someone is making money and Michael Vick is still a monster