A Compassionate World

You know the old adage, “you are what you eat?” Well, the world is now eating more chicken than ever before.  A fact underscored by my recent trip to Washington DC.  In fact, chicken is by far the most populous farm animal on the planet.  Each year, around 50 billion meat chickens are reared worldwide, most in factory farms.  

Seven out of ten chickens globally are reared industrially.  The predominant type of chicken now used for meat has been developed to grow super-fast, reaching slaughter weight in 40 days or less – that’s twice as fast as they would grow naturally.  

The purpose of last week’s trip to the United States was to meet with our friends at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and officials at the World Bank.  Both meetings were with a view to forging closer links and developing ways of improving the lives of animals.

Whilst in Washington, I was struck by the pervasiveness of the fast-growing chicken issue.  Let me be absolutely clear; chickens reared for meat are not usually kept in cages. Not in Europe, the USA or much of the world.  Instead, they are reared in their thousands, often tens of thousands, in tightly packed sheds.  Forced to grow so fast, their bones frequently cannot support their body weight.  Painful lameness is often the result.  Their hearts and lungs too may be unable to keep pace with the growth rate.  As a result, more than 100 million birds, just weeks old, succumb to heart failure each year.  

Much of our attention over recent decades has focused, rightly in my view, on the cage and crate forms of factory farming.  Having incarcerated so many laying hens, pregnant pigs and young calves, these systems are now being legislated into history in Europe.  The USA is now going down the same humane path with several states having passed laws recently to outlaw cages and crates.  The most notable is California, which has banned veal crates, sow stalls and battery cages from 2015.  A truly monumental victory.  

The bad news is the number of chickens reared for meat in factory farms rises seemingly unabated.  The issue of fast-growing breeds is rapidly emerging as the big factory farm issue of the 21st Century.  But it’s not just an animal welfare issue.  Chicken is a good example of how factory farming can often threaten human health and food quality, as well as animal welfare.  

In a previous posting, we asked how healthy is cheap chicken? A typical supermarket chicken today contains nearly three times more fat than in 1970.  During the same period, the protein content of a typical factory-reared bird has dropped by 30%.  Indeed, they have now been shown to contain more fat than protein.  Compare this with an organically reared chicken, which has 25% less fat than an intensively reared bird and has the protein/fat ratio the right way around.  You can see that the way a bird is reared really can make a difference to the quality of the food produced.

Returning from Washington, I looked through the Agriculture Action Plan (2010-2012) of the World Bank.  It identifies major outbreaks of livestock disease such as Avian Influenza as a significant risk to public health.  The plan goes on to state, “The rapid rise in demand for livestock products in developing countries has been associated with the growth of unprecedented concentrations of animals…”.  It reminded me of the words of a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation review of Avian Influenza (2005), “Globally, most cases of HPAI [Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza] are believed to have arisen through conversion from a low pathogenic virus derived from waterfowl to a HPAI virus via passage in domestic chickens.  Intensification of poultry production, especially if this is not accompanied by appropriate biosecurity measures, can favour this process because it provides large numbers of highly concentrated, susceptible poultry in which an AI virus can passage, once it gains entry to the flock.”

Back home, it seems particularly ironic that the London Olympics could serve the world’s athletes factory farmed chicken.  Particularly given the level of lameness, and heart and lung problems often associated with factory farmed chicken, not to mention the food quality issues. You are what you eat?  Lame, fat chickens hardly seem the right food for the world’s finest athletes.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) will soon publish its ‘Food Vision’ for the 2012 Olympics.  We understand that the current proposal would allow factory farmed chicken to be served at this most historic of standard-bearing events.  We are actively engaged in persuading the Olympic Committee to lift the bar and serve meat, including chicken, only from higher welfare production systems.  Your help in our campaign will be crucial in ensuring that the inspiration of the Olympics is channelled into creating better lives in the future.