Chickens' Lib

by Clare Druce

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  MAFF’s 1987 Welfare Code for Domestic Fowls stated (in paragraph 47): ‘Beak trimming should be carried out only as a last resort, that is, when it is clear that more suffering would be caused in the flock if it were not done.’ A last resort? This advice didn’t sit well with what was and still is happening on a vast scale, day in day out, in the poultry industry: the routine partial beak amputation (PBA) of very young chicks. The updated Code (2) tactfully displays less outright enthusiasm for the mutilation, but the message is in essence the same – that it’s still acceptable as long as no more than one third of the beak is removed before chicks reach ten days of age. Under the telling heading Mutilations, the Code instructs: ‘Beak trimming should be carried out to the highest possible standards by trained operators. Operators should be continually re-evaluated for efficiency of their beak trimming skills.’

  DEFRA’s new Guidance on The Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010: Beak Trimming of laying hens gives the same advice, but with the provision that, in the case of chicks of under ten days, only the infra-red beak treatment may be used. The ‘hot blade technique’ is recommended for older birds, should a serious outbreak of aggression occur.

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  The 1980s: Poultry scientists Breward and Gentle carried out exhaustive research into the sensitivity of chickens’ beaks (3), and we welcomed their published paper warmly. Here was the scientific evidence everyone in the welfare movement had been waiting for! We read that not only is the avian beak a complex sensory organ but, as most people know, essential to a bird for food finding, grooming, nest building and more. It’s also richly endowed with nerves. Having observed the de-beaked objects of their research, the team concluded that chickens endure chronic pain in their shortened beaks, comparable to the phantom limb pain suffered by human amputees.

  We referred in some detail to this research in our 1993 booklet Hidden Suffering, and issued a fact sheet on the subject.

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  At one point in our investigations we purchased an Agricultural Training Board video about the mutilation, and it made difficult watching. Day-old chicks’ heads were rammed into a cone-shaped device, allowing just their tiny beaks to poke through, the tips to be pressed against a heated blade, a procedure known to result in possible severe blood loss, shock and even death.

  The operation could be performed at any age, should aggression get out of hand. When older birds’ beaks were cut and cauterised with a red-hot blade, explained a MAFF leaflet (4) : ‘The legs and wings are held firmly in one hand whilst the other is employed in holding the bird’s head and at the same time keeping the beak open with thumb and finger.’

  It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the scene – thousands of birds, terrified, dragged from their cages (most were caged then), the unpleasant and difficult task to be performed by a stressed and soon exhausted man (or woman)…

  Yet MAFF’s optimism knew no bounds, expressing itself confident that its guidance would be ‘adequate to safeguard the welfare of all domestic fowl’.

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  De-beaking, beak-trimming, conditioning, re-conditioning if the operation needs doing twice (the last two euphemisms are American) and the scientific term – partial beak amputation (PBA) – all amount to the same thing – a mutilation intended to limit damage caused by aggressive pecking. Not only are there several ways of describing the operation, some sounding less brutal than others, but different ways of spelling it too – debeaking comes with or without the hyphen. For simplicity, as well as accuracy, I’ll opt for PBA.

  Poultry forced to live in unnaturally large groups or in the constraints of battery cages are under sustained stress, and so behave abnormally. Rather than providing a suitable environment where birds can live peaceably, the industry has resorted to PBA to solve its problems.

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  1991, and the situation looked more hopeful when a FAWC Report called for a ban on routine PBA by 1996 (5). However a Dissenting Minority Report drawn up by several members on the FAWC working party, including Ruth Harrison, called for prohibition within two years. (6)

  In the same year, 1991, Chickens’ Lib circulated a four-page questionnaire to around one hundred farmers of free range hens. The form contained sixty-two questions, the intention being to find out how environment and breed of bird affected welfare, and in particular the need to de-beak the hens. Our initiative enjoyed good publicity, being reported in several industry publications including Poultry World, Farmers Guardian, the National Farmers Union’s Poultry Forum, and was reproduced in full within the pages of UKEPRA News. The response was good, with several farmers claiming that they never had to resort to de-beaking.

  However, the informative responses met with no interest from MAFF. Ah well, it seems we were ahead of our time – in fact, twenty-one years in advance of official thinking. For in 2012, researchers at the University of Bristol, headed by professor of animal welfare Christine Nicol, are, at DEFRA’s behest, appealing to free range egg producers for help. The aim is to discover how free range flocks can be managed without beak trimming, and the hope is to introduce a ban on the abuse – this time in 2016.

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  In 1995 we were shocked when FAWC published its Report on the Welfare of Turkeys. In paragraph 55 the Council noted that previous studies on PBA of poultry were limited to chickens. However, some FAWC members had developed doubts, expressed in paragraph 55. No longer did they believe that the Breward and Gentle findings should be ‘…automatically assumed to apply to turkeys. We discussed the lack of information with the British Turkey Federation who agreed to fund work at an independent research institute to determine the relative merits of different methods of beak trimming turkeys at different ages.’ This struck us as odd – surely a beak is a beak?

  In 1995 Veterinary Record published the results of this independent research, carried out by some of those same poultry researchers at Roslin who’d concluded that chickens suffered chronic pain. (7) The account of the research is complicated, describing three common methods used to achieve PBA. FAWC concluded that beak-trimming (FAWC’s preferred name for the procedure) ‘…influenced behaviour [in turkeys] only to a minor extent and yet had beneficial effects in reducing feather damage and mortality’. However, since FAWC considered the study to have been carried out in insufficient depth, it believed there was room for ‘more research’.

  We were left puzzled again that a turkey’s beak should be so different from a chicken’s, as regards its endowment with nerves, resulting in post-operative pain. A new method, described as being less invasive, was now an option, namely electronic infra-red trimming. However, ominously, the researchers described the procedure as ‘hazardous in unskilled hands’.

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  Only two years later, in paragraph 62 of its 1997 Report on the Welfare of Laying Hens, FAWC was to describe PBA as a ‘major welfare insult’. It would seem the species difference was alive and well. Chickens feeling chronic pain, turkeys less bothered. And I’ve now been informed that the further research, for which there was room, was never carried out.

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  In 2002 DEFRA decided to listen to the anti-PBA lobby and optimistically decreed a total ban on the mutilation, scheduled for 2011. DEFRA was thereby allowing the poultry industry nine years in which to set up new systems, or to demand that the breeding companies select for a strain of more docile birds.

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  In 2008 the Poultry Science Association published a paper entitled Comparative Effects of Infrared and One-Third Hot-Blade Trimming and Beak Topography, Behaviour and Growth. In summing up, this American research concluded that the initial pain impact was greater in the infra-red treated birds, than in beaks cut with a red-hot blade, but the difference disappeared ‘relatively quickly’.

  However, the treated birds may have considered that the pain experienced made time seem to go by exceptionally slowly. They were observed to feed at a slower rate for three or four weeks after treatment by infr
ared heat ‘which likely reflects the increased feeding difficulty that these birds experienced because of the differences in tissue erosion rate in the upper and lower mandibles’. The fact that birds minus part of their beaks eat less, suggests, at best, an inability to pick up food easily. But not to worry! ‘Reduced feed wastage may be an important factor from the producers’ perspective because feed represents a large proportion of the costs associated with egg production.’ (8)

  On page 1476 of this paper there are photos, two illustrating the different methods used in the experiment. Photo B shows an infra-red-treated chick, eyes closed, apparently in pain. That’s odd, because according to the literature ‘Following treatment, the corneum-generating layer remains intact until 7 to 10 days post-trimming, after which the tip of the beak begins to slough off and is subsequently eroded away with use’. The inference (to me at least) is that the photo of the bird in pain was taken several days after treatment, since both upper and lower beaks are already truncated. Closed eyes in a chicken, such as seen in photo B, indicates either pain or impending death. It seems likely that long-term pain may follow any type of PBA.

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  In 2010 FAWC underwent a change of heart. The Council advised DEFRA to defer the ban and the Government listened, issuing new regulations (9). The 2011 ban was now under threat of an unspecified delay, but with instructions that from that year only infra-red technology would be legal for chicks of up to ten days old, though older birds could still be treated with the ‘hot blade technique’.

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  Still in 2010, and the poultry industry appears happy with the status quo, indeed blissfully unaware of the harsh impression it gives. Poultry World’s February edition ran a feature on salmonella in turkeys; included was a photo of four on free range. The beak of the one on the right showed all the signs of serious damage, the result of bungled PBA. How could the editor have allowed this dubious image to be used?

  Then, in June 2010, the cover picture of Poultry World featured five turkeys, also ranging freely, the beak of the one nearest the camera clearly and severely mutilated. Stressed turkeys are notorious for attacking each other, and even free range flocks must be crowded together in sheds at night, and may be kept in during the daytime in the worst winter weather. So, off with their beaks too, partially at least!

  Reassuringly, the Soil Association’s superior standards prohibit PBA. I’m informed by the RSPCA’s Farm Animals Department that the society is actively looking for solutions to the problems of feather-pecking in laying hens but, meanwhile, Freedom Food* accepts the need for the operation to be carried out on day-olds using the cold-cut method. Should serious feather-pecking break out in older birds, though, PBA with a heated blade, followed by cauterising to stem bleeding, is permitted.

  Stonegate Farms have, in recent years, proved that a more docile breed of hen, if combined with a genuinely appropriate environment, can be kept without the need to de-beak. The Black Columbian hen is such a bird.

  In the minds of DEFRA, FAWC and poultry industrialists in general, PBA presumably remains that old enemy ‘necessary pain’, representing yet another example of a cruel practice enshrined in law.

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  In fact, there’s no easy way out of the problem. While birds are kept caged, or together in huge flocks, without sufficient environmental enrichment, they will feather peck and vent peck, often causing cage mates an excruciating death. PBA effectively highlights what’s wrong with today’s farming systems – rather than being built around the needs of animals, the combined aims of low staffing levels and maximum profits generally rule supreme. Unless such systems are changed, this painful mutilation, now officially termed a major welfare insult, is likely to continue.

  Ironically, it’s often the birds in gloomy, controlled-environment battery sheds who may escape the mutilation. In these, lights may be dimmed at will to quieten the birds and achieve ‘acceptable’ levels of mortality, while those kept in natural light or on free range may well have to endure the pain of PBA.

  In her richly referenced book Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs (10) Dr Karen Davis explains in detail the multitude of frustrations that lead intensively-kept birds to resort to injurious feather-pecking. Based on practices in the USA, her book is relevant to the worldwide abuse of poultry.

  Sadly, from many a farmer’s point of view PBA makes sense. For where are the farmers who will risk potentially massive losses while partial beak amputation remains legal?

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  But to return to the mid-1980s: we were even busier in Chickens’ Lib – certainly there were enough problems associated with the battery hen to keep us fully occupied. But then, quite by chance, we discovered an additional area of abuse.

  And this one, in terms of sheer numbers, was vastly greater.

  A can of worms

  August 1984: I’m driving with my younger daughter through our local town. It’s a particularly oppressive, airless sort of day. We notice something white lying in the gutter. Could it be a chicken? It’s very still… I draw into the side of the road and we hurry to investigate. It is a chicken, and alive, just about.

  We start for home, the bird crouching on Emily’s lap, when we become aware of a terrible smell; we’ll definitely need to clean this bird up! I stop outside the chemist’s shop to buy Dettol, leaving my daughter cradling the chicken.

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  When I returned, Emily was pale.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ she said. ‘It keeps reaching round to its rear end, and coming back with maggots in its beak.’

  Maggots! Now it was straight to the local vet, only to be told he wasn’t due back for at least an hour. So we took our chicken home, ran warm water into the deep old-fashioned sink in our basement, added a liberal slosh of Dettol, and gently washed her tail end. And thank God for that sink, well away from our living quarters, for before long its porcelain sides were crawling with maggots, dozens of them.

  By now, we’d decided that our chance find was a broiler chicken, the kind reared for meat, not eggs, and probably female. She had delicate feet and a dove-like look about her. While my daughter held the little bird, damp and smelling now of Dettol, she rested her head on Emily’s arm, exhausted, but seeming grateful for some comfort.

  We knew there was something horribly wrong, probably she was terminally sick, and soon we were back at the vet’s surgery, our chicken on the examination table. She sank down (there was no question of her attempting to escape) while the vet explained that her rear end was by now dead flesh. Clearly, she would have to be put down.

  ‘Is this sort of thing unusual, in chicken farms?’ I asked, knowing that this vet treated farmed animals as well as small animals; would he give me an honest answer?

  ‘There’ll be plenty like this one, in the hot weather we’re having,’ he replied, and I sensed he knew exactly what went on inside chicken farms. Then he gave the lethal injection, to put the patient out of her misery.

  We took our dead broiler chicken home and buried her respectfully, vowing that her life would not have been in vain. And it wasn’t, for she had, almost literally in this case, opened a whole new can of worms. From that moment, our campaign, exclusively dedicated until now to the battery hen, must expand.

  We had no hard proof of where she’d come from, but felt certain we knew. Since moving house, we’d been puzzled by wagons thundering past in the dead of night. A couple of hours later the same vehicles would be back, their brakes protesting as they manoeuvred slowly round an awkward bend in the road.

  Following our roadside find, we put two and two together. Those returning vehicles were groaning under the weight of thousands of chickens, stacked high, on their way to slaughter. Our little bird must have fallen onto the road, perhaps through a gap in a broken transport crate.

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  That evening I cast my mind back to the House of Commons’ Agriculture Report. What exactly did the MPs on that committee have to say about the broiler industry? I found the report and re-read the relevant
section: ‘Paragraph 168: As we said at the start of this chapter, the battery cage system of housing laying hens, and possible alternatives, constitute the main feature of poultry farming which has claimed our attention. The raising of broiler chickens, turkey and ducks does not pose comparable problems and was little mentioned in evidence.

  169: Broilers are raised on deep litter in large undivided houses...There are fewer behavioural problems with these younger birds, and the main potential risk to welfare lies in the possibility of a too high stocking density. We received no evidence that this was prevalent or that the recommendations in the code are inadequate.’ (1)

  So why the silence? It was not as if nobody was aware of the grim facts. I took another look at Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines, published sixteen years before the House of Commons report. It was no secret that broilers were crammed in their thousands into windowless sheds. Ruth had written about the attitude of one broiler farmer: an electrician had been brought in to do a repair in the broiler shed, and nearly vomited when he could not walk around without injuring the birds. When he’d complained about this, the owner had told him not to worry, but just to go ahead and tread on them. (2)

  And MAFF certainly knew. In one of its pre-1964 booklets entitled ‘The Broiler House’, MAFF had described the atmosphere in a typical broiler unit as ‘dusty, humid, and charged with ammonia’ and a MAFF spokesman is on record (March 8th 1962) as describing broiler units as: ‘The biggest single risk of (Fowl Pest) spreading…So many poultry were in a confined space, and extractor fans in broiler houses carried the virus out and into the wind, causing a great risk to all poultry in the vicinity.’ (3)