The Broiler Chicken Industry

Chicken for consumption is one of the world’s most popular meat products. Broiler, or meat chickens, are larger than egg-laying chickens and have been designed through human intervention of selective breeding and genetic modification to grow rapidly to massive and unnatural sizes to reach slaughter-ready weights abnormally early.

Like layer hens, meat chickens’ lives start at a hatchery, but unlike the egg industry, male and female chickens are used. Hatcheries use macerators or gas chambers for weak or deformed birds who aren’t expected to make it to slaughter weight. The process of using gas chambers for day-old chicks is less than 2 minutes. These weak or deformed chicks are put into a container in bins and when carbon dioxide starts to fill the container, the chicks begin to struggle for breath within the first 20 seconds. By the end of a minute, half of them are dead.

The surviving chicks are sent to broiler grow-out farms where they will spend the rest of their short lifespan of 7 weeks. They live in sheds that can hold 40 to 60 thousand birds. Within their first week of life, a mortality rate of 4-6% is normal, meaning 200-500 chicks die at each farm daily. Most of these chicks who die are noticed by workers. But it isn’t only the dead that are thrown out. It’s also those who seem weak or injured.

By 2 weeks, chicks are already struggling due to their body weight. As they grow at an abnormally fast speed, the available space in the shed shrinks. The mortality rate lessens but deaths are still a regular occurrence.

The sheds are not cleaned for the entire 7-week cycle, causing a high concentration of ammonia which can irritate and burn their skin and impede their respiratory system.

Selective breeding, lack of exercise due to overcrowding, artificial lighting, and the heavy use of antibiotics which enhance feed absorption, have resulted in modern broiler chickens reaching a slaughter-ready weight of about 6 pounds in just 35 which is a dramatic increase from a natural peak of 5 in 96 days. Due to this extreme weight gain, their bodies have great difficulty handling this severe physical pressure, making skeletal, cardiac, and metabolic disorders common. Therefore, of those who make it to the slaughterhouse, 90% have a detectable abnormal gait. And it is because of the immense physical stress, most birds die from dehydration or starvation as they are unable to reach food or water.

“Depopulation,” as it is called by the industry, occurs in low light conditions in the middle of the night when the birds are calmest and are unable to see what is happening. They are typically caught by hand by contract teams and put into plastic creates for easier shipment. These crates are then forklifted onto trucks for transport to the final destination of these chickens’ lives - the slaughterhouse.

There are two main processes that slaughterhouses use to process broiler chickens: electric stunning and gas chambers. Both begin with the chickens being loaded off trucks and but electric stunning involves them being shackled upside down by their legs on conveyor belts. Shackling chickens often dislocates their hips and breaks their legs. With electric stunning, the conveyor belt carries the chickens to a shallow water bath where the water is electrified. As their heads are dragged through the water, they are electrocuted and to be rendered unconscious. While they are unconscious, an automatic cutter slits their throats, and they bleed to death, all the while still being shackled upside down, which kills them. Finally, their bodies are immersed in a tank of scalding water to loosen their feathers for easier processing. The carcasses then go on to be fully processed to become meat. However, things can and do go wrong. Some are only paralyzed by the electric current which leaves them conscious and still able to feel pain. Others may lift their heads and aren’t stunned at all. Thus, their throats are slit while they are still fully conscious. It’s also possible that the automatic cutter misses them as the birds flail to avoid harm. A worker stands by with a knife to manually slit the throats of any who have made it that far. Still, it’s not a perfect system and some birds survive and are drowned in the scalding water tank fully conscious.

Instead of chickens being initially shackled upside down, gassing chickens involves placing the crates of chickens onto a conveyor belt. Chickens are carried on the conveyor belt into a gas chamber which is sealed shut and carbon dioxide is pumped in. Timings vary between methods, but after about a minute, the chickens are rendered unconscious. Some slaughterhouses will seal the birds in the chamber until they are dead, which takes about five minutes. The unconscious chickens are carried and tipped out onto another conveyor belt which they are then shackled and scaled in a similar process to birds that have been electrically stunned.

Broiler chickens sold under the RSPCA-approved label are given a single perch running down the middle of the shed, but otherwise, the conditions and process are identical.

In order to qualify as “USDA Organic,” the chicken can not have been fed a diet that includes any genetically modified ingredients or toxic synthetic pesticides. Additionally, antibiotics cannot be used for anything other than to treat medical conditions. However, chickens can be provided with antibiotics during their first day of life as the drug-free rule starts the day day after the shell breaks open. Organic certification requires access to the outdoors to be provided to chickens but does not set a specific standard for the outdoor area, the size of the door leading between inside and outside, or the amount of time the birds spend outdoors.

The label “no hormones” can be applied to any chicken raised in the U.S market as hormones aren’t allowed in the productions of chickens to be sold. Essentially, the label simply means “chicken.”

To get the “Non-GMO Project Verified” label, the chicken’s feed must be comprised of less than 0.9 percent of genetically modified crops. So these chickens are technically not completely Non-GMO.

Broiler chicken farming is one cheapest industry in animal agriculture as the process is relatively short and with modern technology is rather easy to maintain compared to other areas of animal agriculture. However, it is this expediency that comes at the cost of the quality of lives of those who are still babies.

AustralianPigFarming, director. Dominion (2018) - Full Documentary [Official]. YouTube, YouTube, 9 Oct. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko&t=1403s.

images credited to @dominionmovement and @weanimals