Campaigners
say chicken meat needs better labelling. How much do people really know
about the life of a chicken before it reaches their plate?
A long, low, metal shed, fed by large plastic drums, pipes
and chimneys - to the layman it looks like a small chemical plant.
Hidden in the folds of the Peak District, it's an incongruous sight. The
only hint that living things are housed inside is the pungent smell
from the extractor fan - like a mixture of a pet shop and manure. The facility is not a paint or fertiliser factory. It is called Lower Farm and produces chickens. In a period of between 33 and 38 days, the chicks grow to an average weight of 2.2kg - ready to be slaughtered. Lower Farm, just outside Chesterfield, is not what most of us would think of as a farm. It is run by a poultry company called Applied Group, which operates two other farms. The chickens never go outside. Everything happens in four large sheds. The interiors of the sheds are continuously filmed and key statistics recorded - every litre the birds drink, every 10kg of feed that has been dispatched by the feeder mechanism, how much the birds weigh. Lower Farm produces 1.25 million chickens a year.
Nearly all chicken meat eaten in the UK comes from a place like Lower Farm. "This intensive chicken farming goes on behind closed doors," says Dil Peeling, campaigns director at charity Compassion in World Farming (CWF) . "It's hidden from people. They still have this image of chickens scratching around in a farmyard."
Chickens in a Cumbrian rearing shed
This is in stark contrast to eggs, where free-range and organic together make up 45% of UK production. Of the eggs bought in shops by consumers - as opposed to eggs used in processed food - free-range is now half of the market.
Egg-buying habits have changed radically. Farmers respond to consumer demand and free-range eggs accounted for just 11% of production in 1994. Ten years ago it was still only 27%. There's been no such shift on meat chickens. It's not uncommon to see free-range eggs advertised in sandwiches. Pret A Manger uses them. But its chicken sandwiches are not free-range but "higher welfare" indoor-reared chicken.
Egg production and chicken meat are separate industries. Since the 1950s two distinct chickens have been bred by the farming industry - laying hens for eggs and broiler chickens for meat. Sophisticated breeding means that every year a broiler chicken lives one day less to deliver the same weight of food, the RSPCA estimates.
They may be separate industries, but why do so many more people buy free-range eggs than free-range chickens? CWF recently ran a 39-day campaign - the average lifespan of an intensive broiler - to call for a chicken's method of production to be clearly labelled.
There is a significant price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive chicken
Excluding the fillet portions, there is still a difference of almost £2 per kg between intensive and free-range, and more than £6 per kg between intensive and organic. Six Basics eggs cost 90p, while half-a-dozen free-range eggs cost £1.35 and organic £2. This means it costs 50% more for free-range eggs - a significant price hike.
But because eggs are fairly cheap items, it perhaps doesn't seem so bad, just an extra 45p to go for free-range. Opting for free-range chicken breasts works out at £1.96 more expensive. "You've probably got to be quite committed to trade up for meat - not to mention affluent - but the difference in eggs isn't so painful to the pocket," says Richard Griffiths, director of policy at the British Poultry Council.
- 50 billion chickens worldwide
- 116 million broilers in the UK and 29 million laying hens
- 750 million broilers slaughtered annually in the UK
Much of the poultry industry is nervous about arranging visits to farm - few ever get to see inside chicken sheds. After prolonged dialogue with the British Poultry Council, a visit is finally arranged to Lower Farm.
So what is it really like?
The approach to Lower Farm
Push open the door and for a second it's not immediately apparent what the moving creamy white mass at your feet is. Then you make out the individual birds. The shed is huge - 100m long and 23m wide. In the soft light, a sea of chickens stretches as far as the eye can see. It's not the grim battery environment some might imagine.
There's natural light coming in through windows on the sides of the shed. The chickens can move around. Their constant chatter is calm and rather soothing. As we walk through, the chickens part slowly. There's no sense of panic or discomfort. They give you a few feet of space then carry on with what they're doing - sitting, milling around, eating or drinking.
Lower Farm produces 1.25m chickens a year
After each cycle the chicken faeces and sawdust has to be cleaned out and the whole place disinfected. The shed is divided into aisles, about two or three metres apart, of automated feeders and drinkers, giving the birds constant access to feed pellets and water. At one point there's a loud clanking as the feeders are restocked - the chickens rush forward and cluck louder. They eat more when the feed trays have been topped up, says Speller.
It is only after 10 minutes or so that the smell becomes uncomfortable - catching in the throat. It's the ammonia from the chicken faeces. Later I'll notice that my clothes are suffused with the smell of chicken faeces even though I was wearing overalls in the shed. The shed is ventilated to prevent dangerous levels of gases. Speller and his colleague say they are used to it. "We've monitored levels of ammonia, CO² and other gases and actually it isn't very high," says Speller. "But it is a different type of smell."
There are just a few gaps between the chickens. That's after 30% of the birds have been removed in the past 24 hours, so it must be crowded when full. It's legal though. The maximum allowed under EU rules is 42kg/sq m of chicken. The UK sets a stricter limit of 39kg/sq m and the Red Tractor scheme followed by 90% of intensive chicken farms states that farmers must not exceed 38kg/sq m. With the average chicken being slaughtered at about 2.2kg that equates to roughly 17 chickens per
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