Chicken health 'at risk'

14 million broiler chickens are sold each week

By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

A report obtained by the BBC suggests that health and welfare problems in the UK poultry industry may be far more severe than the government acknowledges.

The report details the findings of an independent survey of welfare in Denmark's broiler industry, which found that 30% of the birds suffered severe leg problems in the final stages of their lives.

Yet a survey of the UK industry, commissioned by the industry itself, found under 2% of birds with similar problems.

Animal welfare experts believe the Danish work suggests that the distress of chickens in the UK is being underreported and is not being taken as seriously as it should.

Healthy option

Broilers are chickens bred not for their eggs, but for their meat.

The UK produces 800 million annually, and imports still more.

It [the study] suggests that there is a very substantial problem

Donald Broome
professor of animal welfare

Chicken is popular with consumers, many of whom regard it as healthier than other types of meat.

The Danish survey was obtained by the BBC Radio Four programme Farming Today.

The chief executive of the British Poultry Meat Federation, Peter Bradnock, told the programme the Danish findings were irrelevant to the UK, not least because the sorts of chickens reared in Denmark were not in commercial use here.

But that view was challenged by a leading expert, Donald Broome, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University and also a member of the European animal health and welfare committee.

Industry sluggish

He told Farming Today: "The Danish situation would certainly have exact parallels in the UK. I know the people who did the work in Denmark, and they're really front-line scientists.

"I would really trust their results. The figure that they got is very similar to a much smaller study that was done by Bristol University eight or nine years ago, and I would think that was probably right.

"It doesn't mean that every broiler flock is the same, and there are some differences in genetic lines.

Chicken is the UK's favourite meat

"But the line that they've used is very widely used in the UK. So it suggests that there is a very substantial problem."

Professor Broome said the industry was trying to do something, but it was not going fast enough, and things were getting worse rather than better.

The problem for the chickens is that they are specially bred to gain weight rapidly.

As they do so, their bodies become so heavy that their legs are sometimes unable to support them properly.

Other problems identified include a condition where fluid leaks into the bird's body, and a tendency to sudden death.

An agriculture minister, Elliot Morley, told Farming Today he found the discrepancy between the Danish and the British findings odd, and he thought there was a problem.

The Danish study goes a long way to vindicate the claims of animal welfare campaigners, who have argued for years that the birds often suffer terribly in the later stages of their short lives.

Some regard the rearing of broiler chickens as the worst animal welfare problem in UK agriculture.