![]() In 1957 the average growth period for an eating chicken to reach slaughter weight was 63 days. By day 35 it looks more like a weightlifter on steroids and dwarfs the egg-laying hen.Ĭhickens at a broiler farm in Thailand. It looks like an obese nine-year-old standing on the legs of a five-year-old. By day 11, it is puffed up to double the size of its cousin. By day nine, the broiler’s legs can barely keep its oversized breast off the ground. Underneath were parallel pictures of the modern broiler taken at the same intervals. A series of photographs taken a few days apart showed a normal, traditionally bred egg-laying hen as it grows from chick to maturity. ![]() The RSPCA produced a pamphlet several years ago that for me still provides the best illustration of what this means for the chickens. Much research has been devoted to genetic selection to produce the most economically efficient bird. The lives of broiler chickens are not much easier to contemplate than those of the egg-layers. A change in processing at factories has made it impossible for the FSA to continue its highly effective work naming and shaming supermarkets with the worst bacteria scores. The government watchdog, the Food Standards Agency, was forced to announce that it is suspending its retailer-by-retailer tests of broilers for the food poisoning bug campylobacter. The impact of intensive production on disease in broiler chickens reared for meat has also come under scrutiny once more. A dramatic U-turn in response to the public outcry at the proposal has once again thrown the spotlight on how we treat our farm animals. The issue was back on the agenda in the UK too this month, after a government move to allow the poultry industry to rewrite welfare codes. Debate about those standards has ignited in recent weeks in the US, with a series of high-profile media reports on the cruelty inherent in its livestock production methods. The US, long regarded as a laggard on compassion in farming, is pushing for Europe to open up its markets to American poultry, which is produced to different standards. ![]() New battle lines over the welfare of factory-farm animals were being drawn as President Obama arrived in London on Thursday to promote the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. This high intensity of production tends to affect their bones, which can become brittle and easily broken the birds become stressed – which is why beak clipping is necessary – and listless. Industrial egg-laying hens have been bred to produce more and faster, laying about 320 eggs over a life span of about 72 weeks, compared with a productive life of around four years in more traditional breeds that lay at a fraction of the rate. It is cleaner but remains painful to the bird. Progress here is that farmers must now use infrared lasers to carry out the process rather than the hot blade of previous days. Their primary sensory organ is typically clipped at a day old, whether caged or free range. Full debeaking to prevent hens pecking each other is no longer allowed either, but beak clipping is still permitted in egg-laying hens. ![]()
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