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Welfare plea over supermarket chickens
25/ 7/2005
AMMONIA skin burns are found on 82% of chickens sold on supermarket shelves and reared to industry standards, according to animal welfare campaigners.
The birds suffer from painful hock burn on their lower legs caused by lying on wet floor litter with high levels of ammonia from the chicken's faeces.
The research carried out by Professor Donald Broom and Nadine Reefmann, of Cambridge University, will be featured in a Channel 4 documentary later this month.
It is part of a report released today by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on how chickens are reared for their meat.
The study looked at 384 randomly selected whole grade A chickens from 11 different supermarkets which were conventionally reared to British Farm Standard.
The industry's own standard says that the incidence of hock burn should not normally exceed 15% of the flock.
A sample of 26 organic chickens included in the study found 42% showed evidence of hock burn - a significant fall.
Dr Marc Cooper, RSPCA scientific officer, said: "We hope the industry will address these serious welfare concerns and adopt higher welfare standards like the Freedom Food scheme, which works to the RSPCA's strict welfare standards, or chickens reared as free range, which both provide the birds with more space and the opportunity to be more active.
Conditions
"Chicken is the most popular meat in the UK. Every year over 800 million birds are bred in the UK for their meat. The demand for cheaper meat encourages production of birds in overcrowded conditions that provide maximum meat in the shortest time.
"Lack of space and fast-growing bodies that can become too heavy to be supported by their legs increases the likelihood of birds receiving painful burns to their hocks, as the birds spend more time in contact with poor floor litter.
"Disappointingly, the proposed EU Broiler Directive, expected to become law next year, will do little to improve the welfare of chickens bred for meat as it will allow less space to be allocated to each bird than is currently provided in laying hens in battery cages.
"We want the UK to use its presidency of the EU to help improve the lives of these birds. Because of the number of animals affected, this is the number one farm animal welfare issue in Europe."
The RSPCA report is being sent to MPs and MEPs as part of its campaign to press for higher animal welfare standards in the food industry.
To back this up, the RSPCA is planning a promotion to raise consumer awareness of higher welfare chicken, such as Freedom Food-labelled or free range, when shopping for barbecue meals this summer.
Prof Broom said: "The number of chickens with hock burn was shown to increase with weight, with more of the heavier birds having hock burn.
"It is likely that more of the chickens sold in supermarkets had large hock burns than is apparent from our results, as birds with large hock burns are less likely to be used as Grade A birds and the burns may also be removed before the birds go on sale, so that consumers do not see them."
Most recent 2 of 3 user comments
26/07/2005 at 10:26
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Was BBC right to let Wossy back to work?
I think the best thing that could happen to this country as far as combating animal abuse would be to show adverts on TV every night showing conditions at industrial farms, the brutality of the production line and the automated slaughter line. The meat producers should also be stopped from treating meat with harmful chemicals to postpone the natural decaying process and artificially colour the meat. The red meat colour in shops is not the natural colour of dead flesh. Dead flesh turns grey. I think the true look of meat would cause many to realise how unhealthy this stuff really is. I also think that the government (and common agricultural policy) should stop propping up this dying industry with our taxpayers' money. The true, unsubsidised cost of meat production would place meat outside the price range of many, and would certainly cause many to abandon meat. As a by-product this would actually cause their health to improve as the consumption of large amounts of artery clogging fats, anti decay chemicals, uric acid, artificial growth hormones, animal antibiotics and other chemicals and poisons become reduced.
A win win situation.
19/09/2005 at 14:26
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