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Counting Chickens
Adrian Hatwell speaks with Marianne Macdonald about the grievous plight of chickens bred for meat and the organisation passionately pecking at the system for change.
Chickens are by a large margin the most farmed land animal in the world. At any given time there are an estimated 23 billion chickens on the planet — that’s about 10 times more than any other bird species. This, of course, is not a natural occurring situation. It’s the result of aggressive production practices to provide meat and eggs for the increasingly unsustainable diet of humanity.
Home to Roost
In Aotearoa, the reality for farmed chickens exists in stark contrast to the idyllic image of rolling plains and unspoiled landscapes that is our international brand. The egg industry produces 3.5 million layer hens annually, many of them living out their lives confined to restrictive colony cages. Miserable as that situation is, it is entirely dwarfed by the scale of suffering faced by chickens bred to be used as meat (known as ‘broiler’ chickens within the industry). Approximately 120 million chickens are slaughtered each year in New Zealand, which means four out of every five farmed land animals in the country is a chicken.
These chickens are slaughtered when they are between four to six weeks old — just babies still. And though their lives are short, industrial greed has ensured these birds suffer terribly in that time. The result of uncaring genetic manipulation, these chickens grow explosively fast, to the point where their own bodies cannot sustain them. Packed wing to wing in dark sheds, many become immobile due to collapsed legs, their hearts and other organs failing to keep up with the unnatural growth.
Many thousands die a painful death on the shed floor before making it to the slaughterhouse. Those that survive will be forcibly shackled by the feet, hung upside down, and dragged through electrified water — which may or may not render them unconscious — before having their throats slit.
It’s a horrific situation that the industry works diligently to keep behind closed doors and out of public view for the very real fear that customers would find such cruelty inexcusable. But one local organisation is working hard to kick open those doors and make sure consumers understand the reality their money goes to supporting. Animals Aotearoa is betting once Kiwis understand the suffering behind the product, they’ll use their dollars to vote to improve the lives of our chickens.
A Better Life
Longtime animal advocate Marianne Macdonald established Animals Aotearoa in 2021. Originally from the UK, she worked on a number of different activist projects, including campaigning against vivisection and stopping fox hunts, before moving to New Zealand. Here she continued working to help animals, becoming head of campaigns at animal rights organisation Save Animals From Exploitation (SAFE) and working on a number of different animal welfare issues.
“The more I found out about what was happening with chickens used for meat, the more I thought this is what we need to be working on next,” says Marianne.
Having seen the efficacy of corporate campaigning in the egg industry, where battery cages became illegal in Aotearoa from 2023 (although many hens are still confined to colony cages), Marianne founded Animal Aotearoa to put a focus on the huge amount of chickens farmed for meat.
Animals Aotearoa is part of a global movement advocating for chickens called the Open Wing Alliance. Many of the overseas organisations are working on getting hens out of cages, but Marianne’s group is focussed on persuading local food businesses to sign up to a set of higher welfare standards for chickens farmed for meat, called the Better Chicken Commitment.
“The main thing we need to achieve is changing the really unhealthy breeds [used in the industry], because that causes the majority of the suffering,” she explains. “But it’s also about giving the chickens better living conditions, allowing the possibility that they have a better quality of life.
“Most chickens live a life of total misery.”
While the most efficient way to end the suffering of chickens is to simply not eat them in the first place, Marianne says there are already a number of groups doing good work extolling the virtues of a vegan lifestyle. Animals Aotearoa does not want to reproduce that work, instead focussing on welfare gains for the millions of chickens that will inevitably end up in the existing system.
“The problem is that even though there’s more and more people reducing their amount of animal products or going vegan, there’s a lot of people that aren’t yet. That’s why making a difference for the chickens that are living now and will be in the near future is so important to me.
“The Better Chicken Commitment is really giving chickens the bare minimum they need to have quality of life.”
Free Range Farce
Many consumers who aren’t ready to give up buying chicken meat at least want to pick a product that has been produced with minimal suffering. Reaching for a pack labelled “free range” or “cage free” conjures images of chickens living happily in the sunshine and fresh air before they are slaughtered — but even this small mercy is an illusion promoted by the industry, explains Marianne.
“‘Free range’ is a voluntary standard that the chicken meat industry has created for itself. It means there is a little bit more space per chicken in the shed and there are things called pop-holes in the shed walls that gives them potential access to the outdoors.”
The “cage free” label for meat is completely meaningless, because in Aotearoa no chickens used for meat are kept in cages at all. Instead they are enclosed in huge sheds packed with tens of thousands of birds — even those meeting “free range standards” cram roughly 30,000 birds to a shed. The pop-holes might allow limited access to the outside world, but for the large majority of the birds caught in the midst of the crush, it’s all but impossible to get outside. Particularly when you’ve grown so unnaturally large your legs can no longer support you.
Marianne knows these conditions first-hand, having been inside industrial chicken sheds while in the UK.
“What hits you first is the ammonia in the air. The litter they are lying on is full of ammonia from excrement. It gets into your lungs.”
When it comes to the standards needed to label a product “free range” in New Zealand, she says it’s “virtually meaningless”.
“On the websites, on the odd occasion where they show pictures of chicken farms, they might show some chickens outside — they don’t show you how many are inside. It can look like a carpet, in the last week or two of their lives they’re just kind of squashed in there.
“It’s unimaginable what it’s like in those sheds, really.”
Bad Breed
The core of the problem is breeding. The genetics of the chickens used for meat production in Aotearoa have been carefully orchestrated to produce the most mass in the shortest possible time. A cruel industrial arithmetic that makes no allowance for suffering.
And the suffering of these animals is immense. Chicks are destined to double in size every week of their short life. They soon appear as fully grown adults but will be killed at six weeks old or younger. It’s a rate of growth their immature muscles and organs simply can’t keep up with.
“This is the inherent problem,” exclaims Marianne. “These breeds have just got suffering encoded in their DNA.”
Chosen to develop massive amounts of breast meat (the consumer favourite), young birds become so top-heavy that their legs have trouble stabilising, resulting in falls they often can’t recover from. As they grow rapidly larger, more painful stress is put on the legs, leading many to become lame or develop abnormalities restricting their movement. This of course hinders their ability to access food, water, sunshine, and air.
The unnatural growth rate also puts enormous strain on the fledgeling metabolic system, leading to heart disease and disorder of other organs. These ailments slowly wear away at the young birds, making it difficult and painful to even breathe.
Left to develop naturally, chickens are intelligent, caring, social creatures. Scientists have identified scores of different calls the birds use to communicate, including chirping to babies in their eggs (who chirp right back). They are clever problem solvers with excellent object recognition, and display powerful empathy towards their peers. They even experience rapid eye movement while sleeping, indicating they can dream, and purr softly when content.
All this is robbed from the billions of chickens that are reduced to nothing more than commodities in a factory system we dishonestly label as “farming”.
“When I first met a rescue chicken bred for meat, she had blue eyes and was still cheeping like a baby bird,” recalls Marianne. “Even though they are so big, they’re just babies. But they’ve exploded. That really brings it home, they just haven’t got a chance.
“And that’s why it needs to stop.”
Time to Fly the Coop
So, what steps need to be taken to make it stop? Animals Aotearoa has a few ideas.
Having businesses sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment is the primary way the organisation seeks to influence the industry to adopt higher welfare practices. Internationally, the Open Wing Alliance has seen more than 600 businesses sign up to the commitment. It’s still early days in Aotearoa with eight businesses onboard, including the likes of Domino’s, My Food Bag, The Coffee Club, and Bird on a Wire.
Marianne encourages individuals to let companies know they care about the welfare of chickens and encourage them to sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment. The more companies signed up, the more demand on big producers like Tegel and Ingham’s to make changes that will meaningfully reduce suffering.
One issue making things challenging in New Zealand is the fact that no commercial chicken supplier currently offers the healthier, more naturally growing breeds required by the Better Chicken Commitment. Marianne would like to see the government impose a ban on unhealthy, fast-growing chicken breeds to force the industry to do better.
In addition to removing ruinous genetics from the current system, the Better Chicken Commitment also requires sheds provide more space per bird and provide enrichments like perch space, objects to peck at, natural light, and improved slaughter methods.
“It’s not just good for the chickens, the workers on [Better Chicken Commitment] farms have a lot better time,” says Marianne. “They’ve got natural light, the air quality is better, they don’t spend their whole day just going around and killing the sick chickens.”
Ultimately, Animals Aotearoa wants to see a world in which no chickens (or any other animal) is farmed. Accepting that there will likely always be those who want to eat meat, the organisation hopes to see a future in which cultivated or plant-based meat replaces eating animals.
To help move people in that direction, the group has recently created a new recipe book, A Kiwi’s Chickenless Cookbook, reproducing eight popular chicken-based dishes using a range of easily available vegan substitutes. Head to www.animalsaotearoa.org/learn/chicken-meat-guide to download a digital version or order a hard copy .
Aotearoa Vegan and Plant Based Living Magazine
This article was sourced from the Winter 2024 edition of The Vegan Society magazine.
Order your own current copy in print or pdf or browse past editions.
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The articles we present in our magazine and blog have been written by many authors and are are not necessarily the views and policies of the Vegan Society.
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