Lower Welfare for Chickens

Because I was planning on heading out to watch and film the start of the bird migration, I was up early enough to hear Farming Today on the radio. This is a programme that I get as a podcast anyway so while I listening I was also busy making tea and my packed lunch, as well as dealing with a demanding cat. So I was not sure that I had hear correctly the question the presenter had asked.

The story being reported was that the Chicken Industry wants to increase the stocking density of broiler chickens in intensive systems and via Europe this looks likely to happen. This lead the presenter asking what is wrong with the farmer producing chicken at a price the consumer wants to pay?

Now people always want to pay less for everything, so if chickens were available at one pound (money) per bird there will be people that will buy them. As it is, I can still see chickens for sale at three pounds each or two for five pounds.

The problem is that these birds are produced with the lowest welfare standards as it is, so the proposal to lower welfare standards is just not credible. The lowering even further of poor standards just does not make any sense at all.

I know where this idea is coming from, the need to feed a growing population. Also the need to create the illusion that people are brought out of poverty. The problem is that these fast growing hybrid birds that are the mainstay of industrial chicken raising, put on this weight in the form of fat. While chicken from a pure breed bird is a lean meat, these hybrids are not the healthy meat that people think they are. Therefore all the food industry is doing is feeding more fat to the people and especially the poor.

The situation is that governments are treating the symptoms and not the real problems. I can understand that these solutions appear to be a simple fix for the uninformed politician, but with the problems of obesity and poor health allowing lower welfare standards will exacerbate these problems. Also while we have a problem with H1N1 (Swine flu) bubbling away in the population, it is within these intensive animal husbandry systems that influenza breeds and mutates.

While from the start of the swine flu outbreak I tried to suggest that we need to remain calm, I also said that the real risk was this H1N1 mutating and combining with the more dangerous H5N1 Bird flu. All the politicians are doing is creating greater problems further down the line.

All I ask is when will we learn.