Inside the battery chicken sheds

By Chris Impey
Farming Today, BBC Radio 4

Farmers have defended their poultry farming techniques

A concerted campaign to raise the standards of chicken production has been launched by celebrity chefs, the RSPCA and the animal rights group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF).

They're trying to persuade shoppers that intensively-reared chicken meat and eggs affect animal welfare, and must be changed.

Broiler chickens are birds that have been selectively bred and reared for their meat rather than eggs.

The industry began in the late 1950s. About 75% of the world's food animals are broiler chickens and some 200 billion are produced annually - 800 million of them in the UK.

Windowless sheds

This huge demand for poultry has meant that over the last 60 years commercial breeding has grown in scale.

The farming takes place in large and usually windowless sheds, often containing tens of thousands of birds which have been bred to grow more quickly: typically a broiler reaches a finished weight of 2.5kg within nine weeks. It's sold in the shops for a price of around £2.50.

I hope it will stimulate the industry in[to] being more pro-active in getting over what we're doing better to the consumer Charles Bournes NFU

Animal welfare lobbyists argue that as a result of a lack of space and quick growing, the birds are prone to lameness as well as heart and respiratory problems.

CIWF claims that one in 20 broilers dies because of a heart attack. And, they say, birds can be left to go hungry, suffer stress and unsanitary conditions.

There's also been fierce criticism of battery egg production, where producing birds are housed in small cages.

An EU regulation due in 2012 will see the banning of such practices with larger cages such as a perch and litter being introduced.

Many supermarkets have already banned or are about to ban battery eggs from their shelves.

'Misleading the public'

But British farmers have fiercely defended their farming methods in the wake of such criticism.

The British Poultry Council says it believes the campaign will mislead the public and maintains that its own standards are high, and protect animal welfare.

Chef Jamie Oliver is raising awareness of chicken production

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Farming Today programme, poultry producer Nigel Joice, who with 800,000 birds runs one of the country's largest indoor operations, was adamant that his poultry were well cared for.

With seven staff employed to monitor the birds, he said welfare was the number one consideration on his farm and that the CIWF figure of one in 20 deaths being caused by heart stress was "absolute rubbish". He said the mortality rate of his flock was just 1%.

But the poultry spokesman for the National Farmers Union, Charles Bournes, believes the campaign is actually a wake-up call for the industry.

He told Farming Today: "I hope it will stimulate the industry in[to] being more pro-active in getting over what we're doing better to the consumer, and to let the public know that if [it] wants improved breeding systems, then it's going to have to pay for it."