2024 has been a major milestone in the fight for better chicken welfare. In the past 9 months, Tesco, Aldi, Morrisons and Lidl have all agreed to give their fresh chickens more space, reducing the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals.
What’s the problem with chicken farming?
We’ve all seen those videos of chickens squeezed in crowded warehouses, struggling to walk. But what most people don’t know is just how huge this problem is.
Far from one or two “bad apples”, most of the chickens we eat in the UK come from intensive farms like this one pictured above. In trying to make meat as cheap as possible we have made the animals pay the price.
Why are chickens’ lives so bad?
- Fast growth: Around 90% of these chickens are fast-growing breeds: ‘frankenchickens’ as we call them. Slaughtered at 5-6 weeks old, the birds have been bred over many generations to grow 400% faster than natural. They routinely suffer from serious health problems such as hock burns, lameness and sometimes even heart attacks.
- Crowded conditions: the norm is to keep tens of thousands of birds crammed into a single shed at a time. In their last weeks of life, they get less space each than an A4 sheet of paper on average.
This problem really hits home when you try to think of the mind boggling numbers: over 1 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat every year in the UK. That’s 20 million every week. That’s a lot of animals to keep in bad conditions.
What can we do about it? Better breeds & more space
We brits eat a lot of chicken. But most of us go through life unaware of the true cost that the animals are paying. When shown the reality, Brits overwhelmingly support the idea of better welfare standards.
Launched in 2018, based on extensive scientific research, the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) addresses the most important welfare issues facing modern chickens. Of these improvements, the two most crucial are:
- To use slower growing, healthier breeds;
- To reduce “stocking density” to 30kg m/2, giving the birds more living space.
Do these changes actually make a difference? Yes. The Welfare Footprint Project (a team of animal welfare researchers) have calculated that chickens raised to the standards of the Better Chicken Commitment experience 50% less pain than conventionally farmed chickens.
You can also ask leading authorities like EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and the RSPCA which support these solutions.
But is it working?
Open Cages has been campaigning for the BCC since 2019, alongside our friends in Compassion in World Farming, The Humane League UK, and the RSPCA.
M&S and Waitrose were the first UK retailers to sign up back in 2017 and 2019 respectively, unequivocally demonstrating their place as the UK’s leaders in animal welfare, and appear to be on track to meet their 2026 deadlines.
However, despite many years of outcry from the public, the rest of the major supermarkets – the industry which is responsible for around 70% of the chicken sold in the UK – have resisted change. That’s why I’m happy to say that recently, we have finally begun to see steps in the right direction.
7 out of the top 10 UK supermarkets have now agreed to give chickens more space.
Sainsbury’s (2022), Co-op (2023) and most recently Morrisons, Lidl, Tesco, Aldi (2024), have all agreed to reduce “stocking density” for all fresh chicken, putting the welfare standards of the majority of the chickens they sell in line with the space requirements of the BCC. 2024 was the year of the ‘space race’, causing massive changes to the UK chicken industry.
These commitments are set to be implemented by mid 2025. Altogether, by 2026, I estimate that around 500 million chickens per year will be given better lives – thanks to these and the even better commitments from M&S and Waitrose. That’s half of the UK chicken industry!
With Asda, Ocado and Iceland left to follow, and with BCC commitments from restaurant giants like KFC and Nando’s, I’m confident that we will see an end to these overcrowded conditions for chickens in the UK in our lifetimes.
A good step. But there’s much more to be done.
These changes show that there is motivation from major UK food businesses to do better for chickens. They are rightly recognising the massive public support for reform. But there is still no action on the horizon to tackle the biggest issue of all: fast-growing breeds.
We must end the sale of frankenchickens
The biggest cause of suffering for modern chickens is their genetics. They’re simply bred to grow too fast for farmers to rear them without a good chance of suffering.
To give you an idea, our investigation with the BBC found that at least 1 in 3 of store bought supermarket chickens suffer from a skin disease called hock burn, from prolonged contact with excrement. That’s how bad their lives typically are.
Recognising the need for change, retailers all over the world have agreed to phase out the sale of fast-growing chicken breeds. The list includes every major French and Dutch supermarket, the largest retailers in Norway and Denmark, Aldi and Rewe in Germany, and of course M&S and Waitrose here in the UK.
Sadly, the rest of the major UK supermarkets are yet to follow. But with the 2024 space race well under way, I’m confident that they will. It’s going to take work, and that’s why it’s crucial that we keep up the momentum.
Take action now:
Tell UK retailers that you want them to stop selling frankenchickens. Make your voice heard.
Fuel these campaigns with regular support. The changes we’re trying to make are no small feat. Sign up to become an animal defender and you can directly fund this campaign, securing wins for millions of animals.