by Clare Druce
Under the heading Correspondence on Welfare Matters Point 59 urges staff to deal ‘promptly and sympathetically’ with letters from individuals.
Point 61 instructs that even postcards must be acknowledged, adding: ‘Because it is useful for Headquarters to be aware of the extent of such campaigns, postcards should, after acknowledgement, be sent to Headquarters – if necessary in batches!’ We liked the jaunty exclamation mark. We also liked picturing our postcards being parcelled up for Headquarters. We’d produced thousands of cards, asking our supporters to send them to MAFF, and clearly many were reaching their destination.
Point 63 was headed: ‘Involvement by Welfare Organisations.’ Here, we learned: ‘Veterinary staff should be alert to the activities of the more militant of the welfare groups such as “Compassion in World Farming”, “Chickens’ Lib”, “National Society Against Factory Farming” and “Animal Liberation Front”.’
Point 67 warned: ‘Demonstrations by welfare organisations need to be handled with care. In the case of extreme welfare groups, immediate police assistance must be requested. Other groups should be treated with tact, so as not to destroy goodwill and credibility.’ We assumed Chickens’ Lib fell into the category of ‘other groups’, but whose goodwill and credibility must not be destroyed, we wondered – MAFF’s or ours?
Under Demonstrations by Welfare Organisations instructions were given to guard against making MAFF a laughing stock: For example: c) ‘At demonstrations, small local TV company video cameras are unobtrusive and staff should be instructed to stay away from office windows, even if the demonstrators invite this by wearing fancy dress.’ Well, we took full credit for that bit. Chickens’ Lib’s trademark was fancy dress. ‘A film of laughing faces at a window could make “good” media film for a news report’ concluded the warning.
The advice went on:
f) ‘While representatives are within the office, 2 or 3 staff should be nominated to monitor all of the Group movements ensuring that they do not disperse around the site.’
g) ‘Whilst the interview is in progress, all staff should be instructed to be quiet in the area of the interview room. Laughter may be interpreted as a comment on the demonstrators’ cause and can undermine goodwill.’ (Goodwill cropping up again.)
The final point was brisk and down to earth:
h) ‘A full record of the points discussed should be made immediately the interview is completed.’
Early on in Circular 85/83 came a mysterious item. ‘UPUD Cases: In future Regions will deal entirely with such cases without notification to or input from HQ, except in cases of a politically sensitive nature.’ We suspected the battery system was listed as politically sensitive, but what on earth were UPUD cases?
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I telephoned the Divisional Veterinary Officer at Leeds MAFF. Though not exactly old friends, we were well known to each other by now, and I guessed it was he who’d drafted the Circular, having suffered more than most DVOs from lightening demos on his premises.
Archly, I confessed to a query about Circular 85/83, indicating that I had the document before me.
There was a longish silence.
‘You have it?’ he managed at last, in a strangled little voice.
‘Yes, here, on my desk,’ I replied cheerfully, quoting the name of the senior Whitehall official who’d obligingly signed the attached compliment slip.
‘He sent it to you?’ This was the stuff of nightmares! Had someone at MAFF HQ gone stark raving mad? Defected, even?
I let him sweat for a moment or two before adding, ‘In error’.
The upshot was, I discovered that UPUD stood for unnecessary pain and unnecessary distress. Well, we should have guessed…
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So, exactly how had Chickens’ Lib harassed MAFF Departments of Animal Welfare in Leeds, and elsewhere? A few demos stand out in my memory, and perhaps in the memories of some of the erstwhile staff, too.
Pity Leeds’ MAFF
It’s fair to say that Chickens’ Lib did sorely try the patience of the staff housed in Government Buildings, Lawnswood, Leeds, and at Quarry Dene too. On June 1st, 1979 the Divisional Poultry Adviser had been obliged to cancel an appointment with us, by telegram. Apparently she’d informed Headquarters of our impending visit, only to be instructed to put it off. ADVICE FROM HQ TOLWORTH. PLEASE CANCEL OUR APPOINTMENT ON 4TH JUNE AT MAFF LAWNSWOOD, LEEDS. LETTER FOLLOWING, read the desperate text. The letter, which did follow, requested that we should submit the questions we wished to have answered before any meeting was ‘re-convened’. Did MAFF need time in which to prepare its ground?
But appointments were the exception rather than the rule. One morning we turned up in force at Quarry Dene, the Leeds centre for MAFF’s Animal Health Department. Over thirty of us had gathered nearby, ready to descend on the unsuspecting staff, armed to the teeth with a very long banner, made from an old roll of unused PVC-coated wallpaper, dating back to London days. Originally, our slogan was to have read WHY CONDEMN OUR HENS TO HELL, WHEN HUMANE ALTERNATIVES EXIST?
I’d volunteered to do the lettering, and must have left the task to the last minute. I remember working on it the night before the demo, using a large chopping board as a guide. As midnight approached I despaired – I’d never make it beyond HELL. Leave it at that, I decided wearily, comforting myself that the first part of the slogan was the vital one.
Originally, Quarry Dene had been a grand Victorian dwelling; perhaps a mill owner had lived there, certainly someone prosperous. It was to be found at the end of a long downward sloping drive, edged with dark, sprawling evergreens. Held firmly aloft by strategically placed demonstrators, our wallpaper banner stretched a good way along the drive. On these occasions we always insisted on speaking to the Divisional Veterinary Officer (they’re now known as ‘managers’ – a sure sign of the times). Rarely refused a hearing, a handful of us would be invited into the building, generally Violet, myself, and two or three others. Possibly the motive for obliging us was to avoid escalating aggro, with the media out there eager to record every embarrassing moment. So, not for the first time, down we trooped en masse, brandishing our message, while later the chosen few were allowed into the office of a disenchanted DVO, to complain about the suffering of the battery hen.
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On another occasion we’d decided to present a wreath to MAFF, this time a cheap, homemade version – shabby compared with the one for the Archbishop, which he probably never set eyes on. We’d alerted our usual loyal supporters, and were pleased when the local BBC TV ‘Look North’ team turned up to film us processing solemnly down the path and handing in the wreath to a reluctant official.
We were about to disband when ITV appeared.
“Sorry to be late!” gasped a cameraman.
“We’ve given the wreath in,” we explained. “What a shame. The demo’s over.”
“Well, could you get it back? So we can film you?”
Of course, publicity was all. We mustn’t miss a moment of it. So we rang the bell once more, and explained the situation to a surprised official. No doubt in the interests of avoiding an ugly scene, thereby providing even more damaging TV footage, the wreath was promptly returned.
Our wreath once more ours, we plodded up to the main gate and (on camera again) marched in lively fashion down the slope for the second time.
Another ring on the doorbell. This time the hands of the official who took the wreath were visibly shaking. We felt sorry for him – just a little.
*
Some while later, we joined forces with Compassion in World Farming to produce a new broiler chicken leaflet. CIWF had supplied the photograph for the front, showing an elderly woman – facing away from the camera – selecting a chicken from a supermarket chill cabinet. Soon after we had distributed this leaflet I had reason to phone the Divisional Veterinary Officer at Leeds – the one I suspected of having drafted the internal circular that came our way so conveniently. Our conversation went as usual, rather formal, ve
rging on the chilly, with me asking awkward questions and refusing to be satisfied with the answers I received. We were about to ring off, when he brought up the subject of the new leaflet.
“By the way,” he said, studiedly casual. “Where was the photograph on the front taken? Was it in a Yorkshire supermarket?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “But it would have been somewhere in the south, nowhere round here.”
“Right!” he said, apparently hugely relieved. “I thought it was my mother!”
It made a refreshing change to be ending one of our ‘chats’ in gales of laughter, on both sides.
Poor man, he was becoming quite paranoid.
Sleuthing with Irene
By the mid-1980s Violet was less physically active in the campaign. She still wrote and responded to many letters, helping to run Chickens’ Lib from her office at home, but from now on it was often just Irene and me on fact-finding excursions
Determined to uncover further incriminating evidence about the broiler industry, we began to skulk around small slaughterhouses in the Bradford area. Peering into skips piled high with evil-smelling chicken parts, we discovered severely ulcerated feet, blackened hocks (hocks are the chicken’s equivalent to the human ankle joint) and whole birds too, presumably those rejected as too badly injured or diseased to enter the human food chain. Flies swarmed around these skips and the smell was sickening. On one occasion we pushed our way through strips of plastic curtaining at the entrance to a small slaughter plant, only to be seen off by the management.
But soon we found there was no need to haunt these grim places – the proof of on-farm suffering was there for all to see, right there on the supermarket shelves. The average consumer had no idea what the ugly dark marks on chickens’ hocks implied. To us, the wounds spoke of heavy, inactive birds forced to squat down on filthy, damp litter high in ammonia content. Until Chickens’ Lib exposed the pain endured by the birds (1) and the dangers posed to consumers (2), the ugly truth had been kept from the public. And that’s just how the industry would have liked things to stay.
Soon, Chickens’ Lib was publishing leaflets displaying photographs of hock burns and ulcerated feet, along with a richly illustrated booklet, ‘Today’s Poultry Industry’. To help consumers recognise hock burns we’d purchased a supermarket chicken, polythene wrapped and resting on its moulded tray, severe hock burns plain to see. The backdrop for the photos illustrating ulcerated feet was the boot of my car. We’d bought birds complete with feet from a small butcher’s shop in Bradford, photographing them the moment we were safely round a corner and out of sight. In both examples, harmful bacteria were surely thriving in the wounds (3).
These days, severe hock burns are seen much less often on whole birds and, if given to reading Poultry World, you might be lulled into thinking that problems in the broiler industry are fading fast: ‘In the 1980s, leg problems were more commonplace among broilers, compared with today…Leg issues were largely bred out through genetic selection and by the late 1990s, birds had become more mobile’, stated a cheerful Ms Short, in a Health Special (Poultry World, February 2010). She went on to say that, as a consequence of better legs, breast blisters and hock burns were fewer. However ‘…these were replaced by an increased number of birds suffering from irritation on the soles of the feet. During the 2000s, a degree of gut instability was noticed, resulting in the production of wetter faeces that exacerbated the problem in some cases.’
In the same article, ADAS poultry specialist Justin Emery backed up the theory that footpad dermatitis is usually associated with gut problems leading to wet droppings, often combined with housing conditions.
All this was confusing. Could broilers’ legs really be so much stronger these days? And why should 21st century chickens’ guts be failing to cope? Had broiler shed conditions actually worsened? Explanations were called for.
I tried to contact Ms Short, and finally discovered, via Poultry World, that she was unavailable, and anyway had gleaned all her information from Justin Emery. So next I emailed him.
ADAS was set up as an advisory service to farmers, its advice free in the old days. Not so now! Mr Emery could tell me nothing at all, unless I requested a formal reply, the fee unspecified since Mr Emery had no way of knowing how long it would take him to come up with the answers to my queries.
So I turned to Bristol’s School of Veterinary Science, and straight away was told what I should read: a paper by Toby Knowles et al. about leg disorders in broiler chickens, published in February 2008 and funded by DEFRA itself (4). The abstract at the beginning succinctly exposes what poultry scientists have achieved in their quest for fast-growing chicken: ‘Broiler (meat) chickens have been subjected to intense genetic selection. In the past 50 years, broiler growth rates have increased by over 300% (from 25 g per day to 100 g per day). There is growing societal concern that many broiler chickens have impaired locomotion or are even unable to walk...We assessed the walking ability of 51,000 birds, representing 4.8 million birds within 176 flocks. We also obtained information on approximately 150 different management factors associated with each flock.’ From this substantial number of birds tested, the researchers discovered the following: ‘At a mean age of 40 days, over 27% of birds in our study showed poor locomotion and 3.3% were almost unable to walk’.
Those birds culled, due to suffering extreme lameness before reaching 40 days, were excluded from the figures. Had they been allowed to live and been included in the statistics, the incidence of leg problems would have been even greater. The lameness was put down mainly to the birds’ unnatural growth rate. So nothing much has changed – it seems there’s no reason to believe Ms Short. Or should I say ADAS.
To add to this depressing picture, Poultry World’s November 2010 issue reported that Dr Dave Watts, Regional Technical Manager for Aviagen*** (Western Europe) took time at a ‘broiler roadshow’ in Bradford-on-Avon to draw attention to the ‘significant issue’ of foot pad pododermatitis. (In our experience, this painful condition goes together with hock burns.) Dr Watts warns against false economies such as tinkering with ventilation, and buying cheap litter.
Certainly, supermarkets now want clean-looking birds on their shelves. They’ve had enough of petitions and complaints from inconveniently well-informed customers. Back in the 1990s, the industry began to impose financial penalties should more than 2% of a consignment of birds arriving for slaughter show signs of hock burns. However, there’s no way of knowing how many of those ugly dark marks are simply cut off at the processing stage, so allowing the rest of the bird to enter the food chain. And how many scarred birds still end up in ‘disguised’ form, in products such as soups, pastes and stock cubes, or feature in packs of breasts?
And the feet? Of no value to the meat trade here, most are exported to China, Jamaica and South America. Nowadays chicken feet are worth something to the tune of £700 a tonne to the export trade, this figure enhanced when the saving of rendering them in the UK, some £55/t, is taken into consideration (5).
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The Bristol scientists described the implications of their findings as ‘profound’, pointing out that, worldwide, billions of broilers are reared within similar husbandry systems, and that any of their suggestions for reducing leg problems would be ‘likely to reduce growth rate and production.’
And what breeding company wants to reduce growth rates when faster growth equals bigger profits? The major global broiler chicken breeding companies can be numbered on the fingers of one hand, with all of them very, very interested in profits.
Poultry litter claims victims
January 1989: One morning Irene and I were busy in the office when we heard a tractor rattle past the window. Looking up from my desk, I saw its trailer was piled high with what appeared to be spent chicken litter. We were pretty sure whose tractor it was, but where was the farmer taking the stuff?
Grabbing a camera, we hurried out to the car and followed at a safe distance, noticing how every now and agai
n chunks of impacted litter were dropping onto the roadway. After a couple of miles, we guessed where the tractor was heading, and when it shuddered to a halt, we parked by the roadside. We watched as the farmer opened a five bar gate into a field, got back into the tractor then began to mechanically fling the load over the pasture.
We waited until the job was done and the tractor well on its way back to the farm, then went to take a closer look.
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The litter was distributed thinly over the now not-so-green grass. And there, among a scattering of soiled white feathers, we found the body parts, along with a couple of whole chickens, the ones who’d died and not yet been partly eaten by fellow birds, or rats. From the remnants we could guess the ages of some of the victims. A delicate beak here, once belonging to a chick of about two weeks, a smallish foot there, from a four-week old bird maybe? Before us was a record of week-by-week deaths of the sick birds, ignored and left to die and rot on the shed floor.
I took photos, quite a lot of them, before we left and they turned out well (we wondered what the technicians who developed them thought when the morbid images emerged). Here was proof, if any were needed, that birds of all ages die in the sheds, remaining there until turn-out time.
We found a company that reproduced photos in strips on self-adhesive backing and ordered hundreds of the one of the whole chicken, sprawled on the grass. We sent them to supporters, to use on the outside of letters to MAFF etc. We stuck them onto a statement informing the public that a MAFF official had admitted to Chickens’ Lib that small chicks inevitably die and disappear in the litter. We also drew attention to the danger of sick birds infecting other farmed animals and spreading disease via wild animals and birds.
Poultry litter (composed mostly of faeces by the end of a growing cycle) was at that time not only used for cattle bedding but, once ensiled, actually fed to cattle. In 1988 an outbreak of botulism in cattle was reported in Veterinary Record. Out of 150 housed cattle, 68 had died as a result of being fed ensiled poultry litter (1).