The lives of chickens farmed for meat
A rescued chicken living at Dean Farm Trust. The photos in this post are provided by We Animals Media.
Chickens are curious and interesting animals who have intelligence similar to cats, dogs, and some primates.
In the United States alone, we raise over 9 billion chickens for their flesh every year. That means we kill about 25 million chickens every day, 1 million every hour, 17,000 every minute, or 300 every second.
Though we farm more chickens than all other land animals combined, most of us know little about how they end up on our plates. This post aims to help by taking a closer look at the lives of chickens raised for meat on factory farms, where 99.9% of chickens in the United States come from.
Selective breeding
Modern chickens descended from wild junglefowl, which still exist in Asia today.
During the 1950s industrial revolution, we started selectively breeding chickens to either produce more eggs or more flesh as quickly as possible. We call the latter group “broiler chickens,” because we often broil them when we cook them.
Today, broiler chickens grow 80% larger than they did in the 1950s. While wild junglefowl weigh 2 to 3 pounds when fully grown, chickens farmed for meat now weigh 4.5 pounds when they’re only 8 weeks old.
This rapid growth contributes to a variety of health issues for broiler chickens, affecting their skeletal and cardiovascular systems. In just a few weeks, many of them become crippled because their legs cannot support the weight of their bodies. It's also common for them to succumb to ascites, a disease likely caused by the inability of chicks' hearts and lungs to keep up with their rapid skeletal growth.
“Breeding chickens”
We primarily raise most broiler chickens for meat. However, we also use some for breeding. As we allow these chickens to live longer than their meat-only counterparts, they face an increased risk of organ failure and death as they continue to grow.
To attempt to slow down their growth and maintain their breeding capability, we restrict the chickens’ food intake, which keeps them constantly hungry and frustrated. After a year of food restriction and confinement, their bodies weaken to the point where they can no longer produce as many chicks, so we send them to slaughter.
Debeaking and other procedures
During the first few days of the chicks' lives, we cut off the front third or half of their highly sensitive beaks so they don't peck themselves or others (a stress-related behavior due to their intense confinement). We may also cut off their toes, spurs, and combs. We perform all of these procedures without providing the chicks with any pain relief. Consequently, some chicks die from shock, others die from starvation or dehydration as using their beak becomes too painful.
Living conditions
In the wild, chickens live in flocks of about 10 or fewer birds. They are highly social and maintain a hierarchy within these groups, which reduces conflicts over resources. They enjoy spending their days together, scratching for food, taking dust baths, roosting in trees, making nests, basking in the sun, and breathing fresh air.
Conversely, the chicks we farm for meat spend their entire lives inside poorly ventilated and windowless sheds, alongside thousands of other birds. With so many chicks packed into each shed, they have no space to engage in their natural behaviors. Additionally, the high number of chicks in close quarters makes it impossible for them to establish a social hierarchy, leading to frustration, fights, and injuries.
We don't clean the sheds while the chicks are alive, so they spend all day every day sitting atop accumulating feces. The shed air is full of dust, feathers, feces, and the smell of ammonia. As a result, most of the chicks have chronic respiratory problems, ammonia burns, and bacterial infections. Two-thirds of the chicks have salmonella, campylobacter, or both, which are the main bacteria responsible for foodborne illnesses.
Millions of chicks die before reaching slaughter age, either due to one of these illnesses or because our selective breeding has made them too large to support their own body weight, preventing them from accessing food or water. The remaining chicks are left to live among the dying or decaying birds.
We don't provide medical care. Instead, we put dying and dead birds in the trash.
We feed the chicks growth-promoting food and antibiotics to encourage additional growth. The antibiotics help the chickens extract additional nutrients from their food, enabling them to gain weight even faster. The antibiotics also reduce the chicks’ inflammatory response to illness, so that their bodies don’t divert energy and nutrients away from growth and toward dealing with the inflammation.
By the time the chicks are 6 weeks old, we deem them big enough for slaughter.
Transport and slaughter
Chickens can live 5-10 years, but we typically slaughter them at 47 days, just six weeks, when they’re still chicks.
We often raise broiler chickens in a different location from where we slaughter them. To transport the chicks to the slaughterhouse, we catch them by hand and pack them into small cages on a transport truck. In the process, we fracture the wings and legs of millions of the chicks.
The trucks are so crowded that the chicks have no room to move. Their ride to the slaughterhouse may last for hours or days. During that time, we don’t give them food, water, or rest, and we expose them to extreme weather. Millions of chicks die from hemorrhaging, heat stress, freezing, heart failure, or terror before reaching the slaughterhouse.
For the chicks who are still alive when they reach the slaughterhouse, we hang them upside down by metal shackles, inadvertently breaking more of their legs in the process. The conveyor belt first carries them through an electric bath, intended to stun them. It then passes the chicks through automatic blades that cut their throats. After they have bled out, we submerge them in a tank of scalding water to loosen their feathers. In an attempt to escape, many chickens move and miss the electric bath, the automatic blades, or both, leaving them fully conscious when submerged in the scalding tank, where they then drown.
How to help
If the way we treat broiler chickens makes you uncomfortable, there's good news: as a consumer, you have the power to directly impact the welfare of farmed animals. All you need to do is stop purchasing products that are produced in a way that you disagree with, and suppliers will be forced to either stop or improve their practices. It’s that simple.
Instead, you can purchase animal products from suppliers who treat animals well. But in this case, you’ll need to do research and exercise caution, as farmers and labels often claim to be more humane than they actually are.
Or, you can abstain from consuming animal products altogether, as humans don't need to eat animals to be healthy. Instead, opt for plant-based proteins such as lentils, beans, vegetables, and even fruits.
Every day and every meal, you have the opportunity to live out your values. If animal welfare is one of your values, join us in choosing compassion every time you shop and every time you eat.
