Photo credit – Farm Transparency Project
On July 14th, RSPCA Australia released significant revisions to its Meat Chicken Standard, the certification scheme behind the RSPCA Certified label, which covers more than 90% of Australia’s chicken meat supply. For the first time, the Standard provides a pathway for businesses to work toward the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), the internationally recognised benchmark covering breed, housing, and slaughter methods for chickens raised for meat.
It’s a significant shift in the region’s largest chicken welfare certification scheme and it has direct implications for New Zealand.
What actually changed?
RSPCA Australia’s updated Meat Chicken Standard now includes two levels:
- A base level, which by 2031 will require all chickens to be slaughtered using Controlled Atmosphere Stunning (CAS) rather than being chained upside down and dragged through an electrified water bath.
- An enhanced welfare level, requiring healthier, slower-growing breeds, more space per bird, and environmental enrichment, in addition to CAS stunning at slaughter.
The changes will not go into effect immediately; chicken producers will have until 2031 to eliminate electric waterbath stunning. Until then, they will still be able to market their products as RSPCA Certified at the base level.
Why this matters in New Zealand
Image credit – RSPCA UK / RSPCA Assured
While the RSPCA changes only apply to chickens grown in Australia, it has big implications for chicken farming in New Zealand.
Our supply chains are closely tied to Australia’s. Ingham’s, Australia’s largest chicken producer, also owns two of New Zealand’s major poultry brands: Waitoa and Bostock. As BCC-compliant breeds and practices become commercially established in Australia to meet the new, enhanced welfare level, that shift is well positioned to flow through to New Zealand. New Zealand’s chicken breeds are imported, and come from a small group of countries, including Australia. If healthier chicken breeds are established there, this means NZ chicken producers could more easily import healthier chicken breeds to NZ.
The breed problem is central here. Every chicken commercially bred for meat in New Zealand is a Cobb or Ross breed – unnaturally fast-growing genetic lines selected for rapid weight gain, which are strongly associated with poor mobility, heart and lung problems, and poor welfare outcomes overall. The RSPCA’s move toward endorsing slower-growing breeds helps build commercial viability for the healthier breeds New Zealand producers don’t currently use.
The regional baseline is shifting, not just Australia’s. Before the new RSPCA standards were released, RSPCA Australia began to publicly discuss the importance of breed in meat chicken welfare. SPCA New Zealand has followed a similar trajectory by raising awareness about fast-growing breeds, even endorsing the Better Chicken Commitment. Taken together, these moves suggest that chicken welfare practices are being redefined. Businesses that continue relying solely on unnaturally fast-growing breeds will increasingly be seen as behind the curve.
Our honest take
Chickens grown for meat experience some of the most devastating pain that an animal can feel at a scale that is almost incomprehensible. A chicken on a factory farm will experience awful pain because of the genetic selection that profit-hungry corporations have continued to choose, putting profit above chicken welfare. We choose to advocate for chickens because they are victims of the whims and manipulations of a food system that denies them everything that makes life worth living.
As long as chickens are industrially farmed for meat, we will continue fighting to make their lives better. That’s why we support the Better Chicken Commitment; it aims to eliminate the worst practices in chicken farming: trapping birds in bodies bred to suffer, a lack of any natural light, and spaces so crowded they can barely move. The BCC does not represent an end to suffering; it is a science-backed set of recommendations intended to raise the minimum standard of life for industrially farmed chickens.
We are happy that the RSPCA is phasing out cruel electric water bath stunning in their certification scheme. This is progress.
The base level, however, primarily regulates how a chicken dies, while the enhanced welfare level regulates how a chicken lives. This is a critical distinction and one we intend to highlight in our work moving forward. The fact that RSPCA Certified now offers any pathway to BCC alignment is a milestone. It reflects over a decade of accumulating scientific evidence on what chickens need for a decent quality of life, and it signals that the region’s largest welfare certifier now sees BCC-aligned practices as achievable at scale.
Next steps
Image credit – Wakker Dier
Animals Aotearoa is contacting major New Zealand food businesses, including retailers, to ask where they stand on the Better Chicken Commitment in light of this update. Given how connected our supply chains already are, the commercial case for adopting BCC-aligned sourcing in New Zealand is stronger now than it’s ever been.
We hope that this news inspires similar updates within SPCA New Zealand. In the meantime, we will continue the work that we do every day: holding businesses accountable and ensuring that they do better for animals.