Chickens' Lib

by Clare Druce

So despite a wealth of information out there, much of it recorded by MAFF itself, the House of Commons report made only a passing reference to broilers, all but omitting that massive industry from its enquiry. And the failure had been ours – all of us in the welfare movement. For the whistle-blowing was our job.

  So what exactly had gone wrong? I believe it was a matter of priorities, and too heavy a workload. The battery system and the conditions for pigs and crated veal calves were so cruel; those horrors had claimed almost all the attention.

  Chickens’ Lib, having vowed to campaign exclusively for the battery hen, had turned a completely blind eye on broiler chickens. It took just one little bird by the roadside to kick-start us into action.

  Bungled slaughter

  Though an increasing proportion of poultry is now killed by the controversial Halal method, the majority of chicken slaughter is achieved as follows: the birds’ feet are slotted into metal shackles, a procedure described by researchers as likely to be very painful (1). Hanging upside down, they pass along the killing line until their heads enter an electrically charged water bath. At this point all birds should be rendered unconscious until death is caused either by the initial strength of the electric shock, or from blood loss following neck cutting. The scalding tank, a container of very hot water to loosen feathers, is the final stage of the operation.

  *

  During that same month of our roadside broiler find, August 1984, an important article entitled Slaughter of Broilers appeared in Veterinary Record (2). Its author was an Official Veterinary Surgeon (OVS) of many years standing, Mr Bryan Heath.

  Many chicken processors believed that the bleeding out process must take place before death, the assumption being that a stronger electrical charge in the water bath, designed to kill the birds outright, could occasion unsightly marks on the carcase, known in the trade as ‘red-skin’.

  The nub of Mr Heath’s article was that, in his experience, meat from birds killed outright by the electrical charge in the water bath should be as acceptable to retailers and consumers as that from birds merely stunned, then later bled to death. Stunning to kill was, Mr Heath claimed, a good deal better in welfare terms. The birds’ hearts, he claimed, need not still be pumping at or after the neck-cutting stage in order to achieve an acceptable carcase.

  So Mr Heath wanted all poultry to be killed at the first stage of slaughter, by the use of a stronger, more efficient electric shock. The conclusion to his Veterinary Record article made clear his reason for urging a stun-kill system in all poultry slaughterhouses. He believed the present stunning method was hit-and-miss, leading to cruel deaths for huge numbers of chickens. He concluded: ‘The consensus is that about one third of all broilers are not stunned so this means that, every day in the UK, more than half a million are sentient when they go to the knife. Surely, this is a problem which OVSs [official veterinary surgeons] should tackle?’

  In short, Mr Heath believed that much chicken slaughter was a shambles: he claimed that huge numbers were reaching the scalding tank alive, many of them still conscious.

  *

  Following the publication of this disturbing article I contacted Mr Heath, who seemed glad to talk. Soon I was to discover he was a man of wit, and passionate about his cause. Like us, he was used to brick walls and the idiocy of officialdom, both of which drove him nearly to distraction. I’ve kept my first letter from Mr Heath – in it he addressed me as Ms Druce, admitting that he was using the modern term ‘Ms’ for the very first time, and consequently rather tentatively. For some while, he was to send me copies of letters between himself and researchers, MAFF and others, all relevant to his desperate attempts to change the climate of opinion.

  He sent me a draft of a proposed lecture to an institution called The Research Club, which I believe was attached to the then Silsoe Agricultural Centre in Bedfordshire. Here’s a flavour of Mr Heath’s proposed talk, starting with a description of ‘red-skin’: ‘When production plants began to handle poultry, they found that, instead of being white all over, some dressed carcases have patches of coloured skin. The colour varies from pale knicker-pink to deep red and it is confined mainly to the pimply bits of skin from which hackles grow…Literature about the need for bleeding is a bit unusual. Some authors, without producing any evidence to back up their statements, wrote something like: “Complete bleeding is essential”…The other lot of authors were a bit more conventional; they wrote: “Proper bleeding is essential (Smith, 1970)”. Smith wrote the same thing, followed by Jones (1960). And Jones kept the thing going by referring to Robinson (1950). I managed to get back to the early 1900s and they were still playing this game. When I went to talk about killing to the Ostertag people in Berlin, they told me they had got hold of a paper dated 1856 and they were still referring to earlier work. I think you can be pretty sure that Moses was the original culprit but his reprints are no longer available. The sad thing is that, although this belief is based on no work – and is wrong – it has achieved the status of Holy Writ in the factories. There is one other sacrosanct belief on which the killing of poultry is based. They think an animal will not bleed properly unless its heart keeps beating for as long as possible after venesection [neck cutting]. This, also, is wrong, but it was fostered by a great deal of literature. The authors, though, rather overplayed their hand by claiming that proper stunning causes almost everything that could go wrong- and a lot that couldn’t. Hans Anderson and Lewis Carroll would have been proud to be associated with some of these papers. Although a few days’ simple research or even a few hours’ clear thinking would have shown the absurdity of most of these beliefs, the Industry, and, sadly, UFAW [University Federation of Animal Welfare] swallowed all this rubbish unquestioningly. UFAW recommended 50V for stunning broilers. In the average stunner, 50V would deliver less than 40 mA through each bird- and 120 mA are needed…. The author of the textbook which is looked on as being the Vade Mecum for PMIs [Poultry Meat Inspectors] and is approved by all in authority wrote: “…cutting of the blood vessels should be delayed after stunning for a period of thirty seconds to ensure good bleeding and death.” As stunners are normally set, this allows ample time for the bird to recover before it goes to the knife. The same author, though, shows that, really, he’s quite a kind sort of fellow: he wrote that, if birds are scalded alive, it is “not entirely satisfactory”. (Canadian Department of Agriculture)… As a result of all this muddled thinking, the vets found a pretty gruesome situation when they took over inspection of the factories [slaughterhouses] in 1979. Most of the birds were fully sentient when they had their throats cut (or the backs of their skulls crushed, depending on how the machine was set) and many were alive and almost normal when they were dragged head-first into the scalding tank. Any expressions of resentment by these unfortunate birds were dismissed as being “reflex actions”.

  Remember that all this cruelty was an attempt to stop red skin from occurring.

  By now you may have guessed why I am bothering you with a potty little problem, which must be intolerably boring to brains as big as those in the Research Club. We** have shown that lack of bleeding does not cause red skin, but, until we can show what does cause it, most of the factories are likely to continue looking for bizarre ways of keeping the heart beating for as long as possible…’

  Mr Heath concluded: ‘I feel a bit of a fool for giving such a prosy paper but please realize that I am just a front man for an awful lot of poultry. Since you got up this morning, about two million broilers have been killed and at least 600,000 of them were not stunned properly. Anybody who helps us, even with advice, will earn a lot of gratitude from a very old man, and about 400 million broilers and a lot of other poultry each year.’

  (September 27th 1984)

  I’ve quoted extensively from Mr Heath because who could better express the awfulness of broiler slaughter, especially in and before the 1980s? His August 1984 article in Veterinary Record (this one expressed in suitably scientific language) did, I believe, force a re-
think about poultry slaughter, and not before time.

  In our January 1986 fact sheet, we were able to report that Webb’s Poultry Products in West Yorkshire (previously visited by Violet, Irene and myself) was adopting the stun-kill system, so ensuring that few if any of the chickens killed there would reach the knife or, worse, the scalding tank, still conscious.

  *

  Officialdom would have us believe that slaughterhouses are strictly monitored. However, rumours abound of would-be whistleblowers threatened into silence by the companies for which they work. There’s no doubt that the potential for abuse of animals at the time of slaughter is vast.

  Anyone interested in getting a true picture of traditional British slaughter of farmed animals other than poultry, should turn to Animal Aid’s website (5). To describe the images and information available therein as disturbing would be to understate the case a thousand times over.

  An ugly picture

  While leafing through some old copies of Poultry World, I’ve just come across an article from a copy dated January 14th 1982. The author (whose name I can’t tell you, as I’d only saved part of it) described the worries of a ‘large company’ concerned that a ‘disturbingly large’ proportion of its chicken leg portions were being rejected because of muscle haemorrhages. The same article lists ten of the ‘commoner forms’ of leg weakness found in meat chickens – all in birds destined for slaughter at around 49 days of age.

  In the same year, Poultry World’s July 1st issue contained a grim indictment of the broiler industry as it was then, nearly thirty years ago – and yet again I’m aware of the depressing fact that nothing much has changed, except that broilers are now slaughtered at an even earlier age. In 1982, leading broiler producer Metford Jeans (OBE and chairman of Quantock Poultry Packers) had commented: ‘In chasing weight-for-age above all else, we have just not appreciated what we are doing to the bird. One of the biggest restrictions to supplying the market for larger birds is damaged hocks and breast blisters’. I hadn’t even marked the 1982 articles as being of interest, for it pre-dated by just two years the start of our broiler chicken campaign.

  I’ve also kept a MAFF/ADAS booklet from 1986 (1). Its Introduction stated that broiler leg weakness in all its forms caused considerable economic losses and suffering, sometimes, it seems, from the start. Day-old chicks with red hocks, bruising below the hocks, and twisted legs were to be found, arousing suspicions that diseases had been passed through the parent flock (2).

  Unfortunately there’s no reason to be optimistic that great changes for the better have taken place, despite industry warnings and MAFF/ADAS investigations going back nearly a quarter of a century: the thrust towards fast weight gain and bigger profits still appears to rule supreme.

  *

  By the mid-1980s, around four hundred and fifty million meat-type chickens were slaughtered annually in the UK. Chicken, no longer reserved for high days and holidays, was fast becoming the new junk food: half eaten chicken legs could be seen lying around on pavements on Saturday nights; what had been an occasional luxury was now the cheapest of the cheap.

  Few people looking at the plump birds neatly ranged on butchers’ slabs or supermarket shelves would have guessed these were seven weeks old, mere babies. Under natural conditions chickens can live for as many years, or longer, and a seven week old chick will follow its mother everywhere, still just about small enough to shelter under the maternal wings.

  *

  September 1984: Our latest fact sheet set out the basic facts for our supporters. We explained how the modern chicken has been divided into two distinct types, the one destined for egg production, the other for meat: the first light-weight, the broiler chicken genetically selected for fast growth, a factor encouraged by ‘lifestyle’ and diet.

  And the mother hen, that dedicated fowl, inspiration for the expression ‘fussing like a mother hen’? She’s past history. All intensively reared birds are hatched out in huge metal cabinets under strictly controlled conditions, orphans every one.

  Once hatched, the day-olds are delivered to farms where they’re tipped en masse from boxes onto the shed floor. For these defenceless baby birds, golden symbols of Easter, spring and new life, there’s no maternal figure to follow, no comforting pattern in their lives. They must huddle for warmth under the brooders and attempt to find feed and water points for themselves. Those who fail to cope on their own, who never grasp the basics for survival, are known as starve-outs in the trade. These chicks simply give up the fight for life, almost from the start.

  *

  Genetic selection in the chicken industry has wrought astonishing changes. Ever impatient for greater profits, poultry scientists have ensured that seven weeks (now down to forty days or fewer) is all the ‘lifetime’ today’s birds are allowed. Geneticists have ensured that, by this stage, they’ve put on their most profitable burst of growth. When well under two months of age, they’re ready for slaughter, their eyes still baby-blue and vocalisation high-pitched.

  Broiler chickens live loose on the floor, in windowless sheds, while each flock (known, significantly, as a crop) may number up to fifty thousand chickens, or more. In the 1980s, the dim lighting was kept on for at least twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, broken only by half an hour or so of darkness to simulate a power cut (a blackout could create panic, ending in mass suffocation). This near-continuous lighting, just sufficient for birds to make out their surroundings, encouraged maximum eating time, so maximum growth.

  The accepted stocking density was 0.55 of a square foot per bird (less than a sheet of A4 paper), multiplied by the number of birds in the shed. Tiny chicks of a few days old roaming around on clean litter might look fine. But, as slaughter age approaches, conditions become more and more squalid, for sheds are never cleaned out during the growing cycle. (In America, the same broiler litter may be used many times over.) (3)

  By week six, chickens virtually cover the floor wall-to-wall, squatting on legs that can barely carry their weight, or struggling through the crowds to the food and water points, on a build-up of faeces. Poor ventilation, the time of year and the state of the birds’ droppings can all result in damp litter, and you can be sure there’ll be a smattering of chicken corpses amongst the living, pecked at by fellow birds or half eaten by rats. Filthy litter and ‘deads’ must account for the increasingly objectionable smell coming from broiler sheds near the end of the growing cycle.

  Having studied the broiler system on paper, our next job was to gather first-hand information. In December 1984 we identified a broiler farm in South Yorkshire and Irene and I set off on our quest, aware that we were venturing into unknown territory.

  Down in the quarry

  The farm’s location, down a steep path leading to a disused quarry, made us uneasy, but it was a bright sunny day and the two men who came out to see what we wanted were friendly enough. And our luck was in! That very morning one of the sheds was being cleared. No, it would be no trouble at all to sell us half a dozen live birds.

  Having placed our order, we stood around, patiently at first, pleased with the way things were turning out. Although it was cold, a December sun was shining, flattering the dismal scene. But after some minutes we became restive. What was going on? Why the delay? We wandered round the corner of the shed, following the sound of men’s voices.

  To our dismay our six birds were hanging in shackles from a machine designed to record their weight. So honest were the owners, they didn’t want to overcharge us, little knowing we’d have happily paid double their market value or more.

  It was then, as they hung there, that we noticed the colour of the birds’ frightened eyes, pale blue in the sunshine; baby birds’ eyes, dazzled by the first natural light they’d ever seen. Trying not to appear anxious, we waited for the men to unhook them, handed over our money, and bundled the ungainly creatures into boxes.

  At that stage we were unsure what they would prove, if anything. We were only glad to have spared six chicke
ns the journey to slaughter.

  *

  Once back at my house, we unloaded our purchase. Here’s how we described the chickens in our January 1985 newsletter: ‘The birds we bought were filthy and, for several days, hardly able to stand. This leg weakness was due to lack of exercise and the totally unnatural weight of their bodies (the result of forced growth). The feet of several of them were severely deformed; one had feet resembling a swastika. They stumbled over each other (despite being housed by us in a roomy pen), a clear sign that they’d been used to doing this in the terrible congested conditions they had endured. During the time they were in Chickens’ Lib’s care, they changed from being filthy, bemused creatures who could hardly walk, to clean, bright looking birds who moved around confidently, if clumsily. Nevertheless, they suffered a 66% mortality rate…’

  Our garage was eccentric, and certainly not purpose-built. A long, low stone building, vaguely industrial, it dated back to the nineteenth century, and was too narrow for two cars to be parked side by side. It did house a rather grand inspection pit but, as neither Duncan nor I knew what to look for underneath a car, that was wasted on us. More often than not our cars were left outside, braving the elements. The garage had no electricity, but neighbours who owned the other section of the building kindly allowed us to tap into their supply, at a roughly estimated cost. Warmth was essential – however much our rescued birds had suffered, they were at least used to feeling warm.

  That Christmas the garage was already giving shelter to six ex-battery hens, and now our broilers joined them, in an adjacent pen. Later, we wrote to our supporters: ‘Over Christmas a straw-filled outbuilding gave shelter to a strange collection of poultry – the six broiler birds, huge and ungainly and off-white, next to six battery hens, some scraggy and featherless, some brown – people coming in to view them said it looked like the setting for a rather bizarre nativity scene, with the soft lamplight falling on the livestock.’