by Clare Druce
Consumers should remember that the drugs administered so freely to farmed animals are frequently related to, or identical with, the ones we give to our children in an emergency, or take ourselves – the names are familiar enough: trimethroprim, penicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin. Farmers reach for the medication, vets and the drug companies rub their hands – and to hell with the dangers.
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In March 2012 Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organisation, told an assembly of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen that the now widely predicted post-antibiotic era would mark an end to medicine as we know it. Many routine operations would become just too risky to carry out, she warned, and minor injuries would once again be potentially fatal.
I’ll end this section with an extract from Chickens’ Lib’s May 1991 fact sheet:
‘Chickens’ Lib does not suggest that all veterinary drugs are dangerous or undesirable but believes that systems of animal husbandry that promote ill-health, because of overcrowding, lack of fresh air, etc, are to be condemned. No man is an island when it comes to drug-resistance. Lax standards in human or veterinary medicine in any part of the world can spread drug-resistant bacteria worldwide, through foreign travel. The use of antibiotics in all forms of medicine should be minimised.’
A police visit
Ever optimistic, at least in some respects, we were still hoping to see inside a typical intensive turkey unit. And now we’d noticed a turkey farm as intensive as they come. Faced with the sight of row upon row of windowless, factory-like buildings, and knowing there was little point in asking MAFF to check on the birds inside, what could we do?
The old saying ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ doesn’t always pay off, but it was the best one we could come up with. We’d go along there, get as near to the sheds as we could, and try our luck.
Irene and I went together. We parked my car in the nearby village, and walked to the farm. Even at that stage we sensed the hopelessness of our quest. Yet, having come this far… The first building in the complex looked like a manager’s bungalow, so we made for that. A man, probably the manager himself, came to the door, and we explained that we’d be interested to see inside a turkey farm. But no, there was no way we could look around, or indeed view a single turkey. And please would we leave the premises – now!
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Thinking we’d maybe overhear something of interest, we stopped for a drink in a cold and dispiriting pub (Mrs Thatcher had recently ripped the heart out of the village, previously a coal-mining community). Workers from the turkey place must come in here, we reasoned. But no information reached our ears – today was proving fruitless.
Pale wintry sunshine showed up the tawdry shabbiness of the bar, adding to our depression and sense of helplessness. How could it be, we wondered, that British food production had sunk so low? Thousands of ‘farmyard’ poultry incarcerated in sheds, out of sight, out of most people’s minds, maybe half-killing each other in their frustration, probably in pain, certainly living in misery…We finished our drinks and slowly made our way back to the car.
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A couple of days later: on a wet and windy night, hours after darkness had fallen, our front doorbell rang. Hardly anyone used the front door; friends knew to come round to the back of the house. As I went to see who was there, I felt glad Duncan was at home.
Two policemen stood in the porch, and they lost no time in getting to the point. Did I drive a red Fiesta? Yes, I said. Was its registration such-and-such? Yes, again. And was I in the area of a certain turkey farm recently? Yes, I was. Then, as on the films, I may even have said “You’d better come in.”
We went into the living room, where Duncan joined us. I explained Chickens’ Lib’s concerns about modern turkey farming and described our modus operandi. Chicken and Egg, my book on intensive poultry systems, had not long been published and I gave the police officers a copy. One chapter in the book covers our conviction that intensive methods for poultry keeping are not only cruel but illegal too. I pointed them to this chapter.
The upshot was that we all shook hands, they seemed genuinely pleased to take the book away with them, and that was the end of it.
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But not for the turkeys: for them there would be no end, apart from cruel slaughter. How many millions have gone through the system on that farm alone since Irene and I were seen off some twenty years ago? Unimaginable numbers have been shut away in the seemingly endless range of sheds, denied sunlight and fresh air, forced to live on their own faeces and, I have no doubt at all, among corpses of those birds unable to survive the harshness of it all.
Ducks on dry land
1992. Worried about the factory farming of ducks, Violet, Irene and I visited the headquarters of Cherry Valley, the UK’s major duck producer. We planned to study this escalating industry, starting with some very small samples of its raw material.
We’d noticed Cherry Valley’s claim that it treated its ducks with care and respect, even with a degree of affection – an odd claim that stands today. Twenty years later, its 2012 website (www.cherryvalley.co.uk) presents a bizarre mix of the romantic and the harshly realistic. A proud mention of Cherry Valley’s location in the leafy Lincolnshire Wolds is backed up by shots of cherry blossom, cheek by jowl with a grim row of intensive duck sheds, stretching away into the distance, the presence of all those leaves and flowers quite irrelevant to the thousands of incarcerated ducks. With a bold show of anthropomorphism, Cherry Valley ventures to suppose that their ducks lead happy and comfortable lives.
But to return to the year 1992: Cherry Valley had agreed to sell us half a dozen day-old ducklings. We needed these for educational purposes, we’d explained. On arrival, we waited for a few minutes in the company’s impressive reception area, resplendent with maps of the world, testament to the company’s global footprint.
An employee soon arrived to take us to the hatchery. There, towering metal cabinets lined a long corridor. We guessed each one contained hundreds, maybe thousands, of hatching eggs. The place felt like a laboratory or an eerily silent factory: certainly there was no hint of new life. Yet after a moment’s wait six day-olds, their down already dry and fluffy, were brought to us. We must have looked a respectable trio (teachers, maybe?) for the management would accept no payment and fortunately didn’t ask for details of our project.
Ducks were new to us, but we’d planned ahead. Penny, well used to re-homing ex-battery hens, had a large duck pond and already she’d offered swimming space on it, for when the ducklings were old enough.
Even so we came away a little anxious, wondering how well these tiny golden creatures, soft as thistledown, would thrive in our care.
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I’d constructed a miniature living area for our ducklings, with a heat lamp suspended overhead, and for the first three weeks that was all they needed. Initially, their water container was a lid from an instant coffee jar – small ducklings could drown in anything much deeper, with no mother there to oil their easily-saturated down. But how they loved even this hint of water! Each time I renewed the supply they would ‘chatter’ with excitement. Or was it desperation? Certainly ancestral memory was telling them that water was vital to them: water was where they belonged.
We marvelled at their bills – disproportionately large, and shiny like pink plastic. The ducklings were altogether delightful, and many visitors were taken down to the basement to admire them.
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Our six Cherry Valley ducklings grew apace, and soon we needed to enlarge their living quarters. When they reached a month old we passed three of them on to a good home, to avoid over-crowding. We told our supporters: ‘Apparently, they have settled well, and will shortly be going outside to join various other ducks, with acres of land and two ponds. The three left behind demonstrated their sensitivity to change by becoming very suspicious and alarmed for two or three days. Soon they too will go to an excellent home and we hope to record them on video, experien
cing a real duck pond for the very first time.’
When Penny moved house a few years later she left the three Cherry Valley ducks with the new owner. Given that ducks can live for up to twenty years, I hope our six study samples enjoyed long lives on their various ponds, swimming around contentedly, having been spared slaughter at the customary age of eight or nine weeks.
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MAFF’s 1987 welfare code for ducks (still not updated) made for the usual grim reading. In view of MAFF’s track record in double-talk, readers may not be surprised to learn that paragraph 1 in the introduction to this code contains the following inherent contradiction: ‘The system employed should be appropriate to the health and behavioural and physiological needs of the ducks.’ (1) In the light of the recommendations to follow, one can only wonder at the mind-sets of those dreaming up such evident nonsense.
The advised stocking density for those kept on slatted, perforated or metal mesh floors remains at eight ducklings per square metre from week 3 to 8, or, when on solid (littered) floors (the most common system in the UK) it is seven ducklings per square metre. (2)
ADAS, in its Reference Book 70, was decisive if misguided, stating: ‘…wire floor rearing and fattening has much to commend it.’ And: ‘…water for swimming is not a necessity.’ In other words, ducks will grow fat and most will survive for a few weeks and prove profitable, even under conditions of severe deprivation.
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From Cherry Valley’s literature of the time, we discovered that in the early 1990s the company raised 6.5 million ducklings annually in the UK, while exporting a further 2 million day-olds to eighty countries, a proportion of which were Muscovy (aka Barbary) ducks.
The factory farming of Muscovies leads to severe welfare problems: Muscovies are nothing like the gentle Mallards, with their blunt bills and harmless feet. The Muscovy has a sharp beak and claws and, when under stress, uses both, to the severe detriment of fellow ducks. Consequently, partial beak amputation, dim lighting, and wire flooring were the order of the day. Often imported from France, Muscovy ducks were on sale in many UK stores, including Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Harrods. Eventually, following sustained and effective campaigning by Viva!, these cruelly treated ducks were removed from most UK outlets (3).
In its early 1990s Growing Manual, Cherry Valley recommended a similar lighting regime to that of broilers – 23 hours of dim lighting, with an hour of total darkness to guard against panic in the event of a power cut. As with broilers, this ensured maximum eating time, leading to maximum growth. Troughs holding water were to be of a suggested depth of three inches (7.5cms).
As any child knows, ducks are designed to live in water. Equipped with waterproofed feathers, webbed feet for efficient swimming and diving, broad bills for straining out food from river or pond water, water is their medium. Under normal conditions, ducklings spend a lot of time on water from day one, their fluffy down water-proofed by contact with the mother’s oiled feathers.
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The internet is good for many things, but I miss the days when a telephone call to MAFF or ADAS would as likely as not tell you things you’d never find out from carefully edited websites, still less from a ‘standard’ letter. Now, you’ll be lucky to speak to a real person, and ADAS will charge you for the simplest piece of information.
I remember having a valuable chat with an ADAS Poultry Adviser in the early days of our work on ducks. He referred to modern ducks as ‘little monsters’ and told me it was not unusual to find intensively-reared ducks stranded on their backs – knocked over by fellow birds in the congestion, and unable to right themselves.
Since then, we’ve several times seen footage of ducks stranded on their backs, as well as badly crippled ones using wings like crutches, as they struggle to move around the sheds: living proof of lack of proper inspection and of a complete disregard for their pain and suffering.
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The slaughter of ducks also gave cause for concern. In our 1993 booklet Hidden Suffering we reported on 1990 research, conducted at Bristol. This found that not all birds were killed even when the electrical slaughter equipment was set as high as 250mA; ducks are apparently much less susceptible to cardiac arrest than other poultry (4). Worryingly, MAFF was advising 130mA for duck slaughter, raising our fear that millions of ducks may be inadequately stunned, returning to consciousness on entering the scalding tank. To make matters worse, ducks have a tendency to arch their necks at slaughter, preventing adequate immersion in the electrically-charged water bath (5).
Over a decade ago, killing ducks by gassing was found to be more humane, though even with this system ducks were found to require a longer exposure to the gas mixture than chickens or turkeys (6).
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Water, as well as being necessary for ducks to swim in, keeps eyes healthy. If ducks can’t submerge their eyes every day, they’re likely to develop problems. From the producers’ point of view ducks are messy, tending to splash water around, and they produce wet droppings too, leading to wet litter. Straw litter in duck units is supposedly topped up on a daily basis. To keep the straw as dry as possible, water, other than for drinking, is in most units kept to the minimum, increasing the general deprivation experienced by today’s ducks.
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1999: We decided to re-invigorate our duck campaign, and set about further fact-finding in the usual way – by writing to MAFF with a list of questions. Only this time we hit a snag. MAFF’s reply was evasive, providing, we thought, a prime example of the cosy relationship between the Ministry and industrial farming: ‘The duck industry is dominated by a single company and to supply some of the information which you request would result in a breach of confidentiality (7), was the way MAFF put it. Since our concern was duck welfare and food production, we considered this lack of openness disgraceful. There was nothing for it – from now on we’d be on our own, gathering information from wherever we could.
However, during 1999 we discovered that the animal rights organisation Viva! was also planning to campaign against the factory farming of ducks. It was decided we should join forces, and Viva!’s director asked me to write a report, the deal being that Chickens’ Lib would receive a supply of free leaflets bearing both our organisations’ contact details. I sent the report to Viva! and after additions and further editing at their end it was launched. Ducks out of Water was probably the first-ever comprehensive literature available on duck welfare. Since its publication Viva! has continued to lobby strongly against the factory farming of ducks, updating the report comprehensively in 2002 and again in 2006 (8).
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May 2009: Poultry World reported the findings of a DEFRA-funded research programme prompted by increasing public concern for the welfare of intensively kept ducks (9). Over a period of three years, a series of ducklings of Cherry Valley stock were given various sources of water, ranging from so-called nipple drinkers (overhead devices involving ball bearings, designed to release droplets of water when nudged by beak or bill), through troughs and showers, to baths (to mimic proper ponds).
The conclusion was that the provision of troughs or showers would represent the best means by which commercial farmers could improve duck welfare. The problem of contamination of standing water was ironed out by the showers, which proved more hygienic, as well as economical of water.
Professor Marian Stamp Dawkins, one of the three researchers, told PW: ‘Ducks made it very clear – they love to shower. They used the showers far more than any other source of water we provided. Now further research will have to be undertaken to study their behaviour more closely in terms of how often showering facilities are required. We have now acquired a commercial partner to look more fully at the impact of bathing resources on the birds’ health and welfare.’
Ominously, the PW article reported: ‘…over half the birds moved into the treatment pens at 21 days after not having access to showers or head immersion facilities showed crusted eyes. All these affected birds had overcome their eye problems w
ithin 16 days of having access to showers or troughs.’
Up to sixteen further days of eye problems, even with access to showers or troughs! With crusted eyes and nostrils, doubtless accompanied by unpleasant soreness, it’s no surprise that the ducklings were found to prefer showers and troughs to the miserable nipple drinker. The same report noticed that when the ducks were faced with water for swimming they displayed initial reluctance to take to the water baths. But should that have surprised the researchers? The ducks in their experiments had never seen a mother figure, so why should they feel confident when faced with a relatively large expanse of water? When we took our full-size ducks to Penny’s pond to launch them, so to speak, they were clearly suspicious and needed a few minutes’ coaxing before deciding to take the plunge. Clearly showers are better than shallow troughs but they’re not the same as open water, and they render redundant ducks’ cleverly designed webbed feet, and purpose-built bills.
The British Poultry Council (BPC) had awarded the project a £1,000 scholarship to top up DEFRA funding which, according to an article by Steven Morris in The Guardian (May 20th 2009) amounted to around £300,000. This sum raised hackles in some quarters: Susie Squire of the Taxpayers’ Alliance called the research a ‘bonkers waste of money’, while Devon chairman of the National Farmers’ Union said the study proved that the government department overseeing farm animal welfare was ‘quackers’.
However, in Poultry World’s May 2009 article the BPC’s Chief Executive, Peter Bradnock, expressed himself happy with the research, saying that it would lead to better welfare for commercially reared ducks, so ‘removing the emotive issues associated with farmed ducks and water’.
But Mr Bradnock, the picture is more complex! Water in shallow troughs or from nipple drinkers has to be the only water source for very young ducklings, to prevent sodden down and deaths by drowning. For their first three weeks of life, when orphan ducklings must not be drenched, their eyes and nostrils will be at risk of becoming increasingly encrusted, uncomfortable and even painful. So do troughs or showers, supplied by necessity at a later stage, even begin to ‘remove the emotive issues’?