Chickens' Lib

by Clare Druce

  The Welfare Code for Turkeys stated: ‘The size of a unit should not be increased, nor should a unit be set up unless it is reasonably certain that the stockman in charge will be able to safeguard the welfare of the individual bird’ (7), yet FAWC went along with the industry in these words: ‘The Council accepts that it is not possible for the stockman to look at each bird individually during routine inspection but a good indication of flock health must be gained.’ (8) Again, the old, old story of bending the rules to suit factory farming – and this from the Farm Animal Welfare Council!

  We were shocked by the meek acceptance of the status quo shown by FAWC. At no point did the Council question the legality, let alone the morality of subjecting turkeys to the conditions outlined in its report. With friends like those on the FAWC working party, we thought, what turkey needs enemies?

  In a subsequent Chickens’ Lib newsletter we sent our supporters the following puzzle, extracted from the FAWC Turkey Report:

  CHICKENS’ LIB PUZZLE – FOR SOLUTION TURN PAGE 2 UPSIDE DOWN

  The puzzle: ‘Producers should plan to stock their houses at no more than the stocking density calculated from A= 0.0459 W2/3 where A is in M2 and W is liveweight in kg.’

  ‘We’re not too clear about it, but it’s part of the 1995 FAWC Report on the Welfare of Turkeys,’ we warned our supporters before giving them FAWC’s ‘solution’. It went as follows: “We believe that big turkeys require, weight for weight, less space than small ones, because as turkeys grow their size increases in three dimensions (length, width and height) whilst the floor area they occupy increases in only two dimensions.”(8)

  Our comment to supporters concluded: ‘FAWC is recommending even less space for “big turkeys”. This would represent yet another backward step in terms of turkey welfare. (End of puzzle.)’

  *

  In 2010 I wrote to DEFRA. I wanted to know for certain whether FAWC’s 1995 recommendations for turkey welfare had been acted upon. Here’s what I was told:

  On light levels: DEFRA’s spokeswoman for its Customer Contact Unit (am I a customer of DEFRA?) told me that light levels in controlled environment housing (windowless buildings with extractor fans etc.) are now ‘normally’ higher than 5 lux, and that ‘most’ flocks receive at least eight hours of darkness out of the 24. These figures, she said, reflected four research projects carried out by DEFRA, between 1995 and 1998.

  I’d also asked about hip problems in turkeys, but was assured that ‘as far as we are aware’ hip problems are not an issue. DEFRA admitted the problems had been ‘previously identified’ in breeding stags, but currently has no statistics on its ‘current prevalence’.

  Catching the birds

  The catching and pre-slaughter treatment of poultry is wide open to abuse. Take so-called bagpiping.

  Bagpiping is a slaughterhouse ‘game’ where employees squeeze live chickens until faeces squirt out, to be aimed at fellow workers. I can remember two such cases that came to court. How many similar ‘games’ are played behind the backs of the one or two vets on duty, who may or may not be vigilant? Chicken slaughtering is not a rewarding job, nor one that attracts workers who feel deeply, if at all, for the animals’ welfare. But before slaughter must come the catching process.

  In our booklet Hidden Suffering (April 1993) we stated: ‘Turkeys are large, strong and easily frightened birds. Catchers are generally unfamiliar to them and cause great alarm when they enter the sheds to collect birds for slaughter. Violent treatment of turkeys at all stages of catching, loading, unloading and slaughter has been witnessed on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, people working in the poultry industry are often unwilling to report cruelty, for fear of reprisals.’

  Without the animal activists who trespassed and managed to film the catching process there would still be no progress. Thank goodness for those people brave enough to show the rest of us the true picture.

  In 2006, an RSPCA inspector, giving evidence in court, described a catching-related incident as depicting some of the worst cruelty he had seen. Two catchers in a Bernard Matthews’ unit had been filmed tormenting a live turkey with a baseball bat, the turkey serving as the ‘ball’ in their sick game. By huge good fortune, an undercover investigator from Hillside Animal Sanctuary had been hidden on the premises that night, video recorder at the ready to take footage of the inside of a turkey shed, little expecting to film the catching process, let alone this atrocity. In court the two catchers claimed ‘peer pressure’ and described a ‘culture’ of cruelty at the plant (1).

  In 2007 Hillside caught another Bernard Matthews’ employee on camera, this time kicking rather than throwing turkeys, as the catchers rounded a flock up for slaughter. (2) More recently, Hillside has filmed shocking cruelty on the part of catchers in an intensive duck unit.

  The question must be asked – how often does this abuse go on, countrywide?

  *

  After all the adverse publicity about red meat, horse meat, pork and intensively farmed poultry, meat-eating consumers may well scan any restaurant menu with dismay – whatever should they chose? Even fish is suspect now, what with farmed salmon swimming about in overcrowded, contaminated cages, dosed with antibiotics…

  But wait! There’s pheasant! Now, that’s about as far away from modern meat and fish production as you can possibly get. Game birds are all-natural, part of country life’s rich tapestry, a reminder of times when people connected the living creature with the food on their plate. And they die happy, don’t they? One moment they’re flying free, the next plummeting to earth dead, to be retrieved by some trusty working dog.

  Even if you can’t shoot them yourself, at least you know they’ve enjoyed their freedom. Yes, you’ll decide on the pheasant…

  The sporting life

  For years, Veterinary Record (VR), the weekly journal of the veterinary profession, had been required reading in our office. The Government’s Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) issues regular reports on investigations into animal disease, based on submissions to their centres throughout the UK.

  To our surprise we began to notice game birds cropping up in these reports. Frequently the diseases listed sounded oddly like ‘diseases of intensification’, the term used for conditions linked to intensive farming. But how could this be? Surely, game birds were part of nature, virtually untouched by human hand – until shot, that is.

  So what were these devices called bits, causing such problems? And debeaking? Wild birds debeaked? Impossible! Pheasants suffering from septicaemia, arthritis, brain diseases? Blindness even? And what about ‘starve-outs’? Surely they were confined to gloomy factory farms? And ‘specs’?

  Whatever did these terms mean?

  *

  We found that the Game Conservancy (GC), based at Fordingbridge in Hampshire, had published a series of books on game bird management. Since it was hard facts we were after we ordered several titles, and soon glossy hardbacks were landing in the pigeonhole of our PO Box. Without exception they turned out to be both confused and confusing (in short, badly written) but within their pages were stark facts in plenty, often accompanied by photographs of what looked like instruments of torture.

  When we first concerned ourselves with gamebirds, an estimated 17 million pheasants were shot annually in the UK. Today, the figure has more than doubled (1). Gamebirds have become big business, with birds on some premises numbered in tens of thousands (2).

  Pheasants have a natural lifespan of several years but may be shot from the age of twenty weeks. By then, millions of artificially reared pheasants will have been abused almost beyond belief, a fact that the shooting lobby is determined to hide.

  *

  We concentrated on pheasants, since they represent the greatest number of gamebirds reared for sport. We tracked down companies supplying gamebird equipment and sent off for catalogues (but not from our office address!). As far as specs, bits and brails went, one hundred constituted the minimum order, but we went ahead: there’s nothing like holdi
ng the real thing in one’s hands.

  Soon, not only our supporters but MPs and civil servants too were receiving samples of these loathsome devices.

  *

  Here’s a quick guide to the gamekeeper’s arsenal. NB: ‘Gamekeeper’ may sound old-fashioned and in fact two distinct stages are now common in today’s gamebird rearing process. Often, large commercial hatcheries rear the chicks for the first few weeks of life then deliver the desired number to the site of the commercial shoot. For pheasants, this transfer usually happens at around week seven.

  Warning: the information you are about to read is harrowing.

  Bits: Made from metal or plastic. Come in three sizes. Fed between top and bottom beak and clipped into birds’ nostrils. Purpose: To prevent the beak from closing properly, so minimising outbreaks of feather pecking and cannibalism in crowded sheds and enclosures. Result: Bits prevent birds from breathing through nostrils, and cause dry mouths and pain. They frustrate birds’ basic instincts to pick up small food particles, and prevent effective preening. They must be changed at least twice, as the birds grow: bits are cut through with pliers, when outgrown. (Chickens’ Lib believes that sinusitis, now common in young pheasants, is caused by obstruction of and damage to nostrils.) (3) And finally: Bits removed at least one month before the shoot.

  *

  Specs: Blinker-like discs, usually of plastic, clipped into nostrils, to prevent adult breeding birds from seeing directly ahead. Purpose: To discourage breeding pheasants from damaging other birds or pecking at eggs. Specs with pins: Kept in place with a plastic pin pushed into one nostril and out of the other, en route piercing the delicate nasal septum. Intended to stay in place permanently, the pin has a projecting ‘arrow’, which, once pushed through the second nostril, springs back. Purpose: As above. Result: All specs block the nostrils, impeding normal breathing. Specs, especially those with pins, sentence birds to a life of pain. Specs with pins were readily available in the UK in the 1990s. We should know – we ordered hundreds of them, right up to the year 2000, despite them being described by the Game Conservancy as illegal (4). (More of this confused situation later.)

  *

  Brails: Circles, usually of tape, to twist around one wing. Purpose: To prevent birds flying out of open-topped enclosures, for example disused walled gardens. Most often used on breeding stock. Result: Brails can impede circulation.

  *

  Partial beak amputation (PBA): Described as beak trimming in GC literature, PBA, as with poultry, involves the removal of part of the upper beak. Systems vary, from a red-hot blade (soon to be outlawed) to the infra-red method. In its 1990 publication Gamebird Rearing the GC was applying the belt and braces approach to the problem of aggression, recommending the bitting and PBA of ten-day-old poults with a further ‘trim’ as re-growth takes place, generally at intervals of 10-14 days. Probably the ‘little and often’ approach was adopted so birds wouldn’t appear mutilated on the day of the shoot. However, photographs of PBA in GC literature show a thorough enough cut; the expression in one bird’s eye as an electrically heated cutting blade is poised over a substantial section of its beak all too clearly illustrates the victim’s terror (5).

  We’d hoped the total pointlessness of inflicting both these abuses had been recognised in recent years, in all likelihood leaving bitting as the favoured ‘solution’. However, a 2007 report described nine-week-old pheasants with staphylococcal arthritis/synovitis as having recently been fitted with bits and beak trimmed. Bacteria had entered the wounds, thought to be ‘due to procedures such as beak trimming’ (6).

  *

  Quickly, we built up a picture of the birds’ short lives, as described in GC literature. One person can ‘trim’ two hundred and fifty birds’ beaks in around half an hour (7). ‘A’ size bits must be changed for size ‘B’, as birds grow (8). Upper mandibles may become deformed, owing to lack of abrasion against the lower mandible (9). At 6 to 7 weeks bits are removed and birds transported to release pens (large enclosed areas with trees, shrubs etc.) to be ‘hardened off’ and habituated to freedom.

  Challenging targets are wanted, so release pens are sited strategically – on elevated ground, for example – to encourage birds to fly high on the day of the shoot (10). Disease outbreaks are common at the time of transfer to the release pens (11), the result of stress caused by bit removal and by relocation, the latter possibly involving a journey from hatching farm to estate.

  In 1991, when the GC published Gamebird Releasing, it recommended crating the young birds at 34 birds to a crate measuring 90cm long, 60cm wide and 20cm high (36 inches x 24 inches x 8 inches) (12). Crammed in by any standards, and possibly for a long journey.

  Four weeks before the proposed shoot, birds are encouraged to leave the release pens in order to experience ‘at least a month of liberty’. (13)

  *

  Piercing the nasal septum is illegal for poultry under the Welfare of Livestock (Prohibited Operations) Regulations 1982 (Section 3). FAWN had mistakenly assumed gamebirds to be included in this legislation, a misapprehension apparently shared by the Game Conservancy (14). However, in 2003 a spokeswoman for DEFRA told us otherwise: ‘These Regulations (the 1982 Regs) are made under the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968, which defines livestock as “animals being kept for the production of food, wool, skin, or fur on agricultural land…” however pheasants reared for sporting purposes do not fall into the definition of livestock under this Act. However these animals [gamebirds] are covered by the Protection of Animals Act 1911. Under this Act it is an offence to ill treat or cause suffering to any captive or domestic animal.’

  Forcing a pin through the delicate nasal septum of a live bird, via his or her nostrils? In any normal person’s mind this constitutes extreme cruelty, and it appears from the last sentence quoted above that DEFRA supports this view. Yet somehow game birds, despite being more ‘agricultural’ than an animal farmed for its fur, have continued to fall between two stools.

  It seems the blood sports people have been getting away with an illegal mutilation for decades, all the while skating on thin legislative ice, though the 1911 Act alone should have sorted out this cruelty from the word go. But, as with other victims of factory farming, it’s the will to challenge illegal practices in the courts that’s in short supply.

  Not long after Chickens’ Lib had purchased the range of Game Conservancy books on pheasant production and publicised their contents, those glossy hardbacks, full of revealing photographs of cruelty, were replaced with extremely short and bland leaflets.

  *

  In May 1994 we issued a booklet, Rearing Pheasants for Shoots – the Disturbing Facts, following this up with a leaflet displaying a League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) photo of a pheasant fitted with nasal septum-piercing specs. Later, we produced a postcard showing the same photo, alongside one of a bitted pheasant. Looking at it now, I’m imagining once more the pain that bespectacled bird must have endured, perhaps for months, years even, and I’m shocked afresh by the degree to which the bitted bird’s beak is forced open. In our leaflet, we asked: ‘Would it be acceptable to inflict these mutilations and cruelties on a blackbird, or a robin?’

  At one point, we appealed to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), only to be told that birds reared for sport fell outside the Society’s remit. But should all of them be excluded from the RSPB’s concern? A method for refreshing existing breeding stock, and approved by the Game Conservancy, is ‘catching up from the wild’ (15). This involves trapping unsuspecting wild pheasants.

  How could it be legal to ‘steal’ wild birds then subject them to bird-torture, we wondered? An RSPB leaflet, Birds and the Law, Some Questions answered, included this apparently frequently asked question:

  Q: I know a person who traps finches and keeps them in an aviary. Is this illegal?

  A: Yes, not only is it an offence to take British wild birds, but keeping them is also illegal. You should contact the police or the RSPB with
this information.

  Surely a wild pheasant, hatched in the wild, is a wild bird? The practice of taking wild pheasants into captivity should be challenged, in a court of law.

  *

  Prince Charles is keen on country sports. Was it possible that he was unaware of the cruelty lurking behind those invigorating days out with the shoot? We’d appeal to him and describe what goes on before the shoot, leaving the question of the morality of blood sports to the League Against Cruel Sports. We drew up a petition pointing out the pre-shoot suffering of millions of pheasants and appealed to HRH for support in our campaign.

  *

  Summer 1994: Armed with an impressive number of signatures, we wondered how best to present our petition. Travelling to London simply to hand our parcel over to a bored official struck us as a waste of funds. No, we’d post it at our local Post Office, and hope for press interest nearer home. But first we needed a celebrity.

  Now, Holmfirth is a small Pennine town, the setting for the BBC’s long-running (but now finished) TV comedy ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. Centred around three retired local characters with time on their hands, their absurd escapades were for many years played out amid the beautiful scenery of the Holme Valley.

  Actor Bill Owen played the disreputable Compo. Dressed in shabby trousers kept up with fraying baler twine, Compo was forever being hounded down Nora Batty’s cottage steps as Nora, her hair in curlers and brandishing a broom, fended off his unwanted attentions. We’d write to Bill Owen.