Broiler Chickens – The Forgotten Victims of Factory Farming

Broilers are the chickens reared for their meat, not to lay eggs. Each year, an unimaginable 4.000 million are reared in the EU as a whole. This means that over 10 million broilers are slaughtered each and every day in the EU.

Nearly all these birds are factory farmed. They are kept in huge windowless sheds which can hold up to 30-40.000 chickens. As the birds grow bigger, conditions deteriorate and the sheds become ever more crowded until the floor becomes a solid mass of chickens.

The worst welfare problems stem from the industry’s use of selective breeding to push the bird to slaughter- weight in double-quick time. Modern broilers reach slaughter- weight in about 41 days, which is twice as fast s 30 years ago. What grows quickly is the muscle. However, the supporting structure of legs, heard and lungs cannot keep pace with the rapid body growth. The legs often buckle under the strain of supporting the overgrown body. As a result, millions of broilers a year suffer from painful, sometime crippling, leg deformities. Millions also succumb to heart failure.

While the meat birds are pushed to ever-faster growth, with all the health problems described above, the breeding flock’s growth has to be slowed own to ensure these birds survive into adulthood – and are in a healthy state to breed. This is done by often keeping the breeders on severely restricted diets which can leave them feeling very hungry over long periods.

This article appeared in Farm Animal Voice, Nr. 147.

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