Hemel Hempstead Website

It has taken the efforts of a nine year old Hemel Hempstead girl to shake up the caged chicken debate locally.
Katie Francis was so upset when she watched Jamie Oliver's Channel 4 programme detailing how chickens suffer in mass poultry and egg production, she decided to do something about it.
She is collecting signitures of anyone pledging to buy only free-range chickens and eggs.
If you would like to add your name to the petition, please email Katie at francis915@btinternet.com
or through GoHemel via the contact form at the end of this article.

The Laying Hen  

The ancestors of our modern hens are thought to be the Red Jungle fowl that live in the forests of India and South-east Asia. Naturally, chickens would make a nest and lay one or two clutches of eggs a year, which they would incubate. When the chicks hatched, the hen would protect her young in their first few weeks of life. Despite centuries of domestication, laying hens retain the natural behaviours shown by their wild ancestors. This 'ancestral memory' of the birds' natural way of life has been carried down the generations so that hens retain the need to carry out behaviours such as building a nest, perching, pecking and scratching at the ground, dust-bathing, etc. For the majority of the world's egg-laying hens, the farming system renders it impossible to perform most of these natural behaviours. Today's modern egg-producing hen has a very different life indeed.

Unwanted male chicks  

For every hen hatched for egg laying there is a cock chick that is killed almost immediately after struggling from the egg. Modern selective breeding techniques have resulted in distinct strains of chicken for egg laying and meat production. This breed specialisation has gone so far that birds of the laying strain do not make good meat birds. As male birds of the laying strain do not lay eggs and will not produce meat efficiently, they are killed when a day old.  

Official advice is to kill the chicks before they are 72 hours old using carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. Where small numbers of chicks are involved, neck dislocation or decapitation is also advised. (MAFF, 1987). Another often-used method is a mechanical 'homogeniser', which minces the chicks alive. About 30 million cock chicks a year are killed a year in Britain alone.  

The 'lucky' female chicks are reared either loose on the floor in a deep layer of wood shavings (deep litter) or in rearing cages which become very crowded as the chicks grow.  

The life of a battery hen...  

The majority of the UK's 35 million and the EU's 250 million laying hens are kept in battery cages.  

Imprisoned in a tiny battery cage for life  

At around 20 weeks of age when the young birds start laying eggs they are transferred to battery cages where they will spend the rest of their lives. A typical battery cage measures about 45cm x 50cm (18" x 20") - and houses five hens. Each hen has less space than a piece of A4 paper in which to try to live for one year. A hen's wingspan is about 80cm - keeping most birds in these terrible conditions would quite rightly be illegal.  

Crammed into sheds  

The cages are arranged in rows (or batteries) - up to 6 tiers high, inside huge, windowless sheds. These 'battery houses' can contain up to 75,000 hens. Almost constant artificial light encourages the hens to lay more eggs. The Welfare Codes require the well-being of all birds to be inspected 'at least once daily' which is clearly next to impossible in this system. The cruel and unhealthy conditions in which these birds are kept means that many birds die whilst in their cages. Often dead birds are only noticed and removed when they start to smell.  

Natural behaviour patterns frustrated  

A hen's natural instinct is to keep constantly on the move from dawn to dusk - walking running, flying, scratching with her feet, dust-bathing and pecking. However battery cages are made of wire and no bedding material is provided. The hens cannot even stand up straight and the uncomfortable sloping wire floor of the cage often leads to their feet and claws becoming deformed. As well as causing discomfort and distress, these cramped barren conditions severely restrict the hens' ability to perform natural behaviours. The hens can't fly, perch, dust-bathe, scratch around, build a nest, run or even walk - they are able to do little more than eat, drink, pass waste and, of course, lay eggs.  

Painfully mutilated  

Because of the totally barren environment, battery hens get frustrated. They have nothing to peck at and so they peck at each other. This pecking, combined with feather loss from rubbing against the cage bars, can result in almost totally bald birds. Furthermore, when eggs are laid the vent becomes red and moist attracting the attention of bored and frustrated birds who peck at it. This causes damage which can result in cannibalism - in cages there is no escape! In an attempt to minimise feather pecking and cannibalism, most chicks are de-beaked. De-beaking involves the removal of a portion of the chick's beak using a red-hot blade. This painful mutilation is often inflicted on very young chicks and can result in life-long pain.

'Enriched' battery cages  

Under the EU's 1999 Welfare of Laying Hens Directive, all conventional battery cages will be banned on welfare grounds by 2012. However, the new legislation allows for these cages to be replaced by so-called 'enriched' battery cages - giving a mere postcard's width of extra space per bird. It is doubtful that 'enriched' battery cages offer any significant welfare advantage over the conventional barren battery cages.  

Advocates was delighted when the German Government recently announced that it is to ban 'enriched' battery cages.  

Sadly both the UK Government and the Scottish Executive have so far refused to ban the 'enriched' battery cage.  

Alternative Systems  

Before the EU decided to ban battery cages, approximately 85% of the UK's laying hens were kept in cages, 12% were kept free range and 3% were kept in other systems.  

Free Range  

Hens in this system may be kept in a large shed but there must be an outside area, partly covered by vegetation. Conditions can be better for birds if there are not too many birds and especially where a number of small moveable houses are used (each house holds around 100 birds). In theory, free-range hens should be able to behave naturally - scratch and peck at the ground, stretch and flap their wings, dust-bathe, etc. However, in many free range units, hens are kept in very large numbers and rarely venture out of the sheds.  

Barn/perch/aviary  

In these systems birds are kept loose in large sheds. They may have several tiers or perches, plus floor space with litter. Nest boxes are provided and there may be natural light. The systems vary but hens in these non-cage intensive systems can be stocked almost as closely as in battery houses, but without the extreme confinement of cages.  

The Facts about Broiler Chickens  

  It's easy to pick up those neatly stacked and cleanly cellophaned packs of chicken breast, legs and thighs from the supermarket shelves,  never giving a thought as to how it actually got there. We're almost all guilty of this apathy because we're so used the convenient life. Chicken is so versatile. The mainstay of practically every diet sheet and good food guide going. Mouthwatering tempting, going around and around on those roasting spits, it's hard to resist popping one or two in with your shopping for a quick, cheap and easy meal. Meat eating to the majority of us is natural, normal and enjoyable, but do many of us actually know the truth of animal suffering that allows us the never-ending conveyor belt of convenient, fresh meat. Probably not.
Chickens are probably the most abused of all factory-farmed animals. Chicken rearing is the most intensified and automated type of livestock production.  

How many chickens are there in the UK?  

Around 800 million broiler chickens are reared and slaughtered in the UK each year. The vast majority of these birds are kept in very intensive conditions.  

How are the birds kept?  

Broiler chickens spend their short lives in huge windowless sheds. The birds do not live in cages but are kept on the floor on a layer of litter. Each shed may contain a carpet of up to 100,000 birds. When chicks are small they have plenty of room to move around. However by the time they are 5-7 weeks of age, space is at a premium. Each bird may have an area smaller than an A4 piece of paper.  

Initially lighting is bright to encourage maximum feeding and drinking. However after about three weeks it is usually dimmed to suppress aggression which can lead to fighting and heart attacks. Light may remain on for 23½ hours per day. This is because prolonged inactivity (rest) is economically undesirable as sleeping birds don't eat and drink and put on weight.  

Broiler sheds are never cleaned out during the lifetime of one 'crop' of birds so the litter becomes impregnated with the birds' droppings and urine. This combined with inadequate ventilation, water spillage from drinkers, diarrhoea etc can create filthy litter. Forcing the birds to live in these conditions means they can develop painful hock burns, breast blisters and ulcerated feet. High ammonia levels can also cause blindness. Keeping broilers in such poor conditions not only inflicts suffering on the birds but also poses serious threats to human health. Salmonella and campylobacter, the main sources of food poisoning in humans, are commonly found in broiler chickens.  

There are 85 veterinary medicines currently authorised in the UK for use in chickens. 37 of these are for therapeutic use and the remaining 48 are for prophylactic use.  

These chickens have been specially bred by means of genetic selection over many years to grow quickly and put on weight (meat) quickly. The rapid growth also arises from the use of rich diets and, often, in feed-growth-promoting antibiotics.  

What grows quickly is the muscle, which is what is eaten as meat. The legs and bones, however, do not develop at the same pace and often cannot properly support the overgrown body. As a result, each year, tens of millions of broilers suffer from painful, often crippling leg disorders. Around 90% of broilers suffer from walking difficulties and in about ¼ of these it is serious and painful. In the worst cases, birds can't walk at all. Many die from ascites, a condition which means that the birds' heart and lungs are also unable to keep pace with the rapid body growth. This results in millions of chickens dying each year of heart disease before they are even 42 days old.  

How old are the birds when they are slaughtered?  

Most intensively-reared chickens are slaughtered at about seven weeks of age (42 days) when they are still baby birds (a chicken's natural life span can be 10 years). A chicken can weigh 5½ lbs at 49 days, twice the weight of a chicken reared some 30 years ago.  

Do many of the birds survive these conditions?  

In the intensive broiler system it is inevitable that some birds will die. This loss is built into the economics of the industry. Chicks are only days old when they are put into broiler sheds. Motherless, the chicks must fend for themselves from day one. They are fed and watered automatically by machines. Those that fail to find their way to food and water points are called 'starve-outs' and soon die.  

Towards the end of the cycle, some broilers are so crippled they cannot walk, so these too die from starvation and dehydration. Each year about 40 million broiler chickens (6%) die before reaching slaughter age. Others die on the journey to slaughter. Common causes of death in the sheds include starvation, dehydration, heart attacks, heart and lung diseases and disorders, heat stress or one of a multitude of other diseases.  

Aren't there people whose job it is to care for the birds?  

Workers are legally supposed to check the sheds for dead (and sick) birds on a regular basis. However, with so many birds to check, proper welfare inspections are impossible. Many dead and dying birds go unnoticed. Unnoticed dead and dying birds get trampled on by the living birds and soon decompose in the litter.  

How are the birds transported to the slaughterhouse?  

The suffering and distress caused to broiler chickens during catching, transportation and slaughter are similar to that experienced by 'battery hens'. Catching is done at great speed, with 'catchers' roughly grabbing 4 or 5 birds by one leg in each hand. Soft young bones break and hip joints (often already painfully deformed) become dislocated when birds are caught. Each year, 1-2 million birds die on the way to the slaughterhouse. These deaths are caused by injuries, suffocation and shock.  

How are the birds slaughtered?  

The birds are shackled by their feet. An automated shackle line carries the fully conscious birds to the electric water bath where they will suffer a painful electric shock which is supposed to render the birds unconscious. However, many birds can avoid contact with the water by raising their heads - meaning that they are fully conscious when they have their necks cut.  

And so the cycle continues... In order to maximise profits, when a batch or 'crop' of chickens is removed from a shed and taken for slaughter after a 6-7 week growing period, the shed is soon cleaned of soiled litter, fumigated and re-stocked with the next batch of bird