Nando’s is among several major UK restaurant chains that have walked away from the Better Chicken Commitment, a science-based benchmark designed to address the worst suffering of chickens bred for meat. Instead, these companies are backing the ‘Sustainable Chicken Forum’, an industry-led initiative that presents itself as a sustainability solution while avoiding the most meaningful chicken welfare reforms.
This is nothing more than greenwashing, and this group has been labelled “A Cartel of Cruelty”.
The Better Chicken Commitment requires a transition to healthier, slower-growing chicken breeds, which are widely recognised as the most important factor in improving welfare. The Sustainable Chicken Forum does not. By replacing a science-based welfare benchmark with a weaker, company-friendly framework, Nando’s and others are helping preserve the status quo while presenting it as progress.
Why is Nando’s walking away from the Better Chicken Commitment?
Nando’s behaviour should be seen as a leading example of a wider corporate retreat from meaningful chicken welfare reform. Rather than upholding the Better Chicken Commitment, it is now associated with a framework that pretends to consider welfare while, in reality, being an avoidance tactic for meaningful progress.
That matters because the Better Chicken Commitment is not an arbitrary aspiration. It is a science-based benchmark that targets the most severe causes of suffering in the lives of chickens reared for meat. Walking away from it is not a neutral policy shift. It is a move away from a credible welfare standard and toward a weaker model.
Nando’s is not acting alone. The Sustainable Chicken Forum includes several major brands that had previously committed to the Better Chicken Commitment, including Nando’s, Yum! Brands, Burger King UK, The Restaurant Group, The Big Table Group, the UK franchisee of Wingstop, Popeyes Louisiana Chicken UK, and Loungers UK Limited.
What is the Better Chicken Commitment?
The Better Chicken Commitment is a set of scientifically backed criteria designed by scientists and leading animal protection organisations to address the worst welfare problems for chickens bred for meat. It is widely recognised as the leading benchmark for welfare because it focuses on the reforms that matter most, rather than the reforms companies find easiest to implement.
Most importantly, the Better Chicken Commitment requires a transition away from abnormally fast-growing chicken breeds. This is essential because breed is the single most important factor in meat chicken welfare. Fast-growing birds have been selectively bred to reach slaughter weight at an unnaturally rapid rate, and that extreme growth causes profound suffering.
Many of these chickens experience chronic pain and lameness. Some struggle to lift their own bodies to reach food and water. Others suffer from respiratory distress, poor leg health, or organ failure within just a few weeks of hatching. These are not rare outcomes. They are built into the production model itself.
The Better Chicken Commitment also includes improvements to stocking density, environmental enrichment, lighting, and independent auditing. But without breed change, those measures cannot fully address the underlying physical harm caused by fast growth. That is why slower-growing breeds are not a minor detail. They are central to meaningful chicken welfare reform.
Who is signed up to the Better Chicken Commitment?
According to Compassion in World Farming’s 2025 European Chickentrack report, over 410 companies across Europe, which value good animal welfare, are still signed up to the Better Chicken Commitment. 163 million chickens bred for meat are already benefiting from improved on-farm BCC criteria. In New Zealand and Australia, food brands are playing catch-up, with only nine BCC commitments so far.
What is the Sustainable Chicken Forum?
The Sustainable Chicken Forum is an industry-led initiative made up of companies that claim slower-growing chicken breeds are less environmentally sustainable than the fast-growing breeds currently used across much of the sector, and are currently used exclusively in New Zealand and Australia. It presents itself as a practical alternative to the Better Chicken Commitment, but it falls far short of that standard.
The Sustainable Chicken Forum exaggerates the environmental and economic costs of higher-welfare chicken production while failing to offer the features that give the Better Chicken Commitment credibility: measurable welfare targets, a robust reporting framework, independent oversight, and a requirement for breed change.
In short, the Sustainable Chicken Forum fails as a substitute for the Better Chicken Commitment. It is a weak framework that gives companies more room to avoid the reforms that matter most.
Why are slower-growing breeds so important for chicken welfare?
Slower-growing breeds are widely recognised as the most important factor in improving the welfare of chickens reared for meat. That is because the dominant fast-growing breeds used in the chicken industry are associated with severe, predictable health and welfare problems.
Current standards for chicken welfare remain deeply inadequate when companies continue to rely on fast-growing birds. These chickens grow so rapidly that many experience chronic pain, lameness, and other debilitating health problems. Better lighting, more enrichment, or marginally improved housing cannot undo the fundamental welfare harms caused by breeding birds to grow at this unnatural rate.
Research shows that slower-growing breeds have substantially better welfare outcomes, including much lower mortality rates than fast-growing birds. In practical terms, that means fewer chickens dying or being culled because their bodies cannot cope with the demands placed on them.
This is why breed change sits at the heart of the Better Chicken Commitment. Any framework that avoids breed change is avoiding the most important welfare reform on the table.
How is “sustainability” being used to weaken chicken welfare standards?
One of the most deceptive features of the Sustainable Chicken Forum is the way it places animal welfare under a broad and vague sustainability umbrella. It allows companies to dilute clear, science-based welfare obligations by treating them as just one of many competing considerations.
That matters because it is already well established that slower-growing breeds are the most important factor in improving meat chicken welfare. By folding welfare into a corporate sustainability framework, companies can avoid the breed transition and instead dictate the terms of reform according to internal preferences, supply-chain convenience, and maximising profits. Scientifically grounded benchmarks like the Better Chicken Commitment are then displaced by weaker standards that companies effectively design for themselves.
This is what makes the framing so misleading. Sustainability is being used not to strengthen chicken welfare standards, but to weaken them. Companies can present themselves as thoughtful and responsible while walking away from the clearest benchmark for reducing suffering in their chicken supply chains.
That is why this is just a PR stunt. The language of sustainability is being used to justify a retreat from meaningful welfare reform.
If companies were serious about sustainability, would they reduce meat?
The Sustainable Chicken Forum is also flawed on its own stated terms. It treats sustainability as though the only relevant question is how chicken is produced. But a genuinely serious sustainability strategy would also ask how much chicken is being produced and sold in the first place.
Animal-based foods are inherently more resource-intensive than plant-based alternatives. Plant-based foods produce significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions than meat and dairy products, including chicken. That means reducing reliance on animal-based foods is one of the most effective ways to lower food-related emissions.
Yet this more fundamental question is excluded from corporate frameworks that assume continued meat expansion as a given. That makes their sustainability framing poorly lacking and self-serving. These companies present sustainability as a technical challenge to be solved within a meat-centred system, rather than confronting the fact that reducing meat in their supply chains would be the more meaningful climate strategy.
A sustainability framework that assumes continued meat growth from the outset is already a compromised one.
Why the Sustainable Chicken Forum is not a real alternative to the Better Chicken Commitment
The Better Chicken Commitment is a science-based benchmark for chicken welfare. The Sustainable Chicken Forum is an industry-led initiative that does not require the most important welfare reform. The Better Chicken Commitment sets measurable expectations. The Sustainable Chicken Forum is about avoiding responsibility. The Better Chicken Commitment is built around welfare outcomes. The Sustainable Chicken Forum is a cop out!
There is already evidence that higher-welfare systems based on slower-growing breeds can work in practice. Norsk Kylling, a Norwegian company that transitioned to a slower-growing breed aligned with Better Chicken Commitment principles, has reported substantial welfare improvements while maintaining profitability and production efficiency. The company has also reported a lower overall carbon footprint while rearing three million fewer chickens per year to produce the same amount of meat.
That example matters because it undermines the claim that companies must choose between chicken welfare and sustainability. A system is not sustainable if it requires animal cruelty to exist.
Nando’s should recommit to the Better Chicken Commitment
From an animal welfare perspective, the problem is twofold. First, slower-growing breeds are the single most important factor in improving the welfare of chickens reared for meat. By subsuming welfare under a broader sustainability framework, companies like Nando’s can avoid the necessary breed transition and replace science-based standards with weaker approaches.
Second, if these companies were truly serious about sustainability, they would not confine the debate to how meat is produced. They would acknowledge that reducing reliance on animal-based foods is one of the most effective ways to cut food-related emissions.
That is why the Sustainable Chicken Forum and similar initiatives do not materially improve either sustainability or animal welfare in the supply chain. Their real function is to maintain the status quo while presenting it as progress.
If Nando’s wants to be taken seriously on chicken welfare and sustainability, it should recommit to the Better Chicken Commitment. Anything less is business as usual, hiding behind greenwashed language.
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