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Chickens, Turkeys & Ducks
How producing meat from birds impacts animals
According to a leading Australian ethologist, Professor Lesley Rogers, the cognitive abilities of the chicken have been vastly
underestimated, and the domestic chicken is the 'avian species most exploited and least respected’.
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Today, birds bred for meat production grows at an astounding rate. A modern "broiler" or meat chicken is an entirely different bird than those used in the egg production industry. Today, a broiler chicken can reach slaughter weight within 33-42 days. The rapid growth rate has been achieved through selective breeding, manipulation of artificial lighting to increase feed intake and routine feeding of antibiotics. The impact on these birds is significant.
Fast Facts
Rapid Growth
RAPID RATES OF SUFFERING
Today, birds bred for their meat have been selectively bred to grow very large, very quickly.
Chickens that are bred for their meat are known as 'broilers'. Today, these chickens grow 300 times faster than in the 1960s, reaching 2kg in just 35 days.
Turkeys have been selectively bred to grow so big, so quickly that if a 3kg human baby grew at the same rate, they would weigh 227kg by the time they were 18 weeks old.
This rapid growth causes immense suffering, with research showing that chickens can spend the last 20% of their life before slaughter in chronic pain. Walking becomes so painful; they can often no longer reach food or water.
Confinement
WHEN CHRONIC PAIN IS YOUR CAGE
Birds farmed for meat; "Broiler" Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks, are not housed in cages. They are most typically kept in large sheds with incredibly high stocking densities in Australia. For chickens, around 40,000-60,000 birds are housed together; for turkeys, approximately 20,000 birds; for ducks, around 18,000 birds will be housed in each shed.
Whilst not physically confined by cages, the birds become less able to walk around due to the sheer size and number of other birds and simply from being in too much pain due to their rapid growth.
Today, some producers claim to offer enrichment, such as perches, however, these are of little value to the birds as they grow, because they cannot use them due to their size and limited mobility.
Artificial Insemination
BRED SO BIG, THEY CAN NO LONGER NATURALLY REPRODUCE
Due to being bred to grow to unnaturally large sizes, turkeys raised for commercial use in Australia cannot reproduce naturally.
Artificial insemination is standard practice in the turkey farming industry.
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Semen is collected manually from male turkeys (toms) in a process called "milking". Turkey hens are artificially inseminated using a semen-filled straw. This process is repeated weekly from the age of 18-23 weeks old until she reaches 60-65 weeks of age.
When a breeder turkeys’ productivity begins to slow, they will be considered no longer economically viable and slaughtered.
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Waterless Waterbirds
DENIED ACCESS TO SURFACE WATER
Most commercially sold duck meat in Australia is from ducks raised in intensive conditions on farms where they are never able to spend time outdoors or able to express their natural behaviours.
In Australia, Ducks are farmed in large barren sheds with no enrichment. Stocking densities allow for as many as 18,000 ducks per shed. Total confinement systems (intensive systems) are the most common housing systems in Australian duck farming. Stocking densities permit one square metre of floor space for up to five fully grown birds or 50 ducklings. Ducks in total confinement systems are denied access to the outdoors for foraging, roaming or socialising. They are also denied surface water for bathing, floating, or swimming.
As aquatic birds who would naturally spend a significant amount of time floating on water, ducks have weak leg joints. On intensive Australian farms, there is no legal requirement to provide ducks access to surface water. Accordingly, ducks can't express many natural behaviours such as swimming, bathing, or cleaning their eyes, nostrils or feathers. Denied access to surface water, ducks must support their body weight for the entire length of their albeit short lives. Because of this unnatural weight bearing, many suffer from dislocated joints, broken bones, and lameness.
Artificial Lighting
LONG DAYS, SHORT LIVES
Kept indoors, birds raised for meat never experience natural sunshine.
Instead, they are kept under artificial lighting, which can be manipulated to distort their usual sleeping and feeding patterns, extend eating times, and manage the 'productivity' of the birds. Such lighting programs affect their growth and mortality rate, body weight, and birds' susceptibility to metabolic diseases and circulatory problems.
Artificial lighting is used in conjunction with selective breeding to create the rapid growth rates of today's chickens, turkeys and ducks who are bred for meat.
Beak & Toe Trimming
LEGALISED CRUELTY
Due to being housed in such large numbers in unnatural conditions under artificial lighting, stress and frustration are endemic amongst birds raised for meat.
Turkeys, kept alive for up to 18 weeks, can resort to obsessive behaviour such as feather plucking and even cannibalism. Farms often manage cannibalism by cutting away a portion of the beaks (debeaking) or ducks bills, using a hot blade.
Birds' beaks and bills are delicate structures that due to extensive nerve supply, are sensitive to heat, pain and pressure, and are vital for normal drinking, eating, and preening. Following beak amputation, birds observed over 5-6-weeks have demonstrated signs of depression and long-term chronic pain.
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The Australian Poultry Code of Practice also allows the snood (prominent section of skin located on a Turkey's forehead) and a segment of each inward-pointing toe in breeding males to be cut off.
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Compassion for Chickens
Create a kinder world
Aside from the cruelty, all animal products are inherently inefficient to produce. Because animals are living beings who grow, move and spend energy just living, they use up more calories than we end up being able to extract from their products (meat, milk or eggs). The ratio of how much feed goes in vs how much we get out is known as the 'feed conversion ratio'. The feed conversion ratio for meat chickens in Australia is 1.9. This is lower than other animals conversion ratios, largely due to the fact that these birds are confined in sheds, unable to expend much energy moving, and they are bred to grow so quickly they are only alive for 5-8 weeks and thus don't have very long to consume calories. The feed conversion ratio for meat chickens means it requires up to 1.9 kilograms of feed for every kilogram of chicken meat produced. (Turkeys have a FCR of 2.8 and Ducks 3.1, all are lower than other animals due to their rapid growth rates and confinement).
The grain that must be grown to feed chickens, ducks and turkeys uses vast amounts of land and water, in fact, it takes 4,330 litres to produce 1 kilogram of chicken meat. The global water footprint of chicken meat in the period 1996-2005 was 11% of the total water footprint of animal production in the world (all farm animals).
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"Per kilogram of product, animal products generally have a larger water footprint than crop products. The same is true when we look at the water footprint per calorie or protein. The average water footprint per calorie for beef is twenty times larger than for cereals and starchy roots. The average water footprint per gram of protein in the case of beef is six times larger than for pulses." Water Footprint Network
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The number of chickens raised and killed each year (around 700 million) is staggering. These chickens, selectively bred to reach slaughter weight as quickly as possible in order to maximise profits, inevitably spend their short lives suffering and confined. The same can be said for Turkeys and Ducks, who have also been bred to grow incredibly large, incredibly quickly.
Today there are lots of ways to replace animal products that are better for the animals, the planet, and your health.
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Choose Kindness - Spare millions of Chickens, Ducks and Turkeys a short and brutal life, and terrifying, painful death, by swapping animal products for plant based alternatives.
Kinder Options
