Don’t be conned by free-range chicken
When you hear the term free-range chicken, you might see in your mind’s eye the sorts of images so carefully marketed to you; birds having a happy existence, wandering outdoors, scratching in the dirt, enjoying life. While free-range conditions do certainly make a huge difference to the welfare of pigs and brown-feathered hens used for egg production, it’s unfortunately a different story for chickens bred for meat. Their problems run deeper than can be solved with some more space.
Many Kiwis choose free-range chicken meat when they can, or look for endorsement and certification schemes assuring them of good welfare. People like to think the animals they consume had a good life but sadly, the reality for most chickens sold as free-range is theirs is a short life packed with suffering. Caring people are being misled into paying more for so-called free-range chickens, who in actuality may never have been outside until they are loaded onto a truck bound for slaughter.
Even when chickens have access to the outside via ‘pop-holes’ along one wall of the shed, they are often not well used. This is due to an especially toxic combination of factors.
- The main factor is the bad breeds of chicken used. In Aotearoa, even on free-range farms, all chickens bred for meat are of the same fast-grow breeds, called Cobb and Ross Both breeds grow so big, so fast they struggle to walk, even at just a few weeks old. Many of the chickens suffer painful lameness and other health problems, which deter them from moving far. A few steps is often all they can manage at a time, before they plop down again, their heavy bodies weighing them down. The chickens spend most of their time sitting. Inside a shed it looks like a white sea of ‘meat cabbages’, mostly sitting, in their own faeces.
- Another reason is crowd size. In large industrial production systems, the sheer scale of how many chickens are kept in one shed – up to 30,000 birds – means many chickens are overwhelmed and squashed in the crowd. Such a gigantic population of chickens prevents many from being able to get through the crush of bodies and out the pop-holes, in order to actually use the outdoor range. Chickens can also be quite territorial and those around the ‘pop-holes,’ which may also discourage less confident birds from accessing the outside.
- Additionally, the actual time chickens are allowed to see the sun is very limited. Young chickens are kept locked inside the shed for around the first three weeks of their lives, until the pop holes are opened to allow those who can get through, outside. This sounds alright until you consider that the chickens are killed at just 4 – 6 weeks old. This means it’s only between one week and three weeks of their short lives, when the unhealthy breeds of chickens are even allowed out in the fresh air before they are slaughtered.
A key additional problem is the entirely unregulated nature of ‘free range’ in the market. There is no legal standard for free-range: all that is required is *potential access* to the outdoors. Chickens have an innate fear of open spaces (where predators can attack) and can be reluctant to go outside when the only option is a barren space, lacking shelter. This leaves these chickens crammed inside sheds, just like their non-free-range counterparts. Studies on the proportion of birds that go outside free-range sheds vary from a meagre 2% to 74%. Even at the highest end of the scale, that’s one in four birds who spend their whole lives in a crowded shed, sitting and standing in excrement-soaked litter.
In situations where a more suitable outdoor range is provided, such as by Bostock (now owned by Ingham’s), with plenty of trees and bushes so the chickens feel safer, more of them do go outside. While this is a good thing, frustratingly, because they are still the same unhealthy fast-grow breed, these chickens have the same restricted mobility, the same difficulty accessing the pop holes and the same chronic health problems.
Recently, the SPCA Certified programme has expanded to now cover a significant share of the domestic poultry market. All of Ingham’s, Bostock and all free-range under the Tegel and Rangitikei brands are SPCA Certified. By the end of 2024, all Tegel chicken will be free-range and therefore also under SPCA Certified.
In both free-range and fully indoor systems under SPCA Certified, chickens have more space than the legal minimum. Behavioural enrichment inside sheds is required, including perches and objects to peck at. There is overhead shade and shelter at all times to encourage outdoor range use in free-range systems. To allow for sleep, chickens get at least six hours of darkness daily instead of the legal minimum of four. These are great improvements for chickens when compared to the legal minimums of the Meat Chicken Code of Welfare and an important step forward. However, the same unhealthy, fast-growing breeds are used within all SPCA Certified chicken farms, as well as regular free-range and fully indoor factory farms. Even when farms have fewer chickens and better outdoor ranges, birds still suffer. These bad fast-grow breeds are fundamentally broken. They often struggle to walk and thousands die simply because their bodies grow faster than their organs and bones can handle.
The best thing you can do as an individual is to keep chickens, and all animals, off your plate. While people continue to eat chickens, however, the most significant change we can make to the welfare of chickens is to advocate for better, healthier breeds. Thoughtful free-range conditions can really start to be meaningful when the foundational genetics are more healthy and robust, instead of the current practices where the birds are bred to break.
That’s why we are calling on food businesses to sign the Better Chicken Commitment.
That’s insane. How do they live with themselves knowing that they are torturing those chickens. I have 6 and they are treated like royalty.
Yes, this is so wrong in many ways: for people who are being duped into thinking buying free-range chicken stops the suffering and of course, for the chickens, who struggle to walk and many never get outside the dirty sheds.
How deplorable. Why don’t humans watch videos like this and educate themselves into what happens to chickens, cows, calves, lamb’s etc. As humans (animals) what gives us the right to create agony , pain, for animals and then murder them in the most painful ways. How would we feel if our babies were treated as all baby animals are?!!! Wake up Canada and the world to the endless pain for these creatures.
Hi Deirdre, you are right. This is a global problem. Farmed animals suffer on a routine basis despite being fully sentient, i.e. being able to feel both positive and negative emotions. Change is urgently needed.