How the Better Chicken Commitment is Impacting Billions of Birds

The suffering experienced by chickens raised for their meat is unfathomable—both in sheer numbers and in severity of suffering. In the U.S., over 88 percent of all animals raised for food are chickens—representing close to 9 billion chickens raised and killed for meat each year. These intelligent, social creatures are forced to live their lives crammed into filthy, windowless barns with tens of thousands of other birds, and with little to no enrichments, such as perches or fresh dirt, that allows them to live more natural lives. Their litter is rarely changed, so each bird is forced to inhale toxic ammonia fumes and endure chemical burns on their bodies. They are bred to grow so large so quickly that they often are subject to painful leg deformities, leaving them unable to stand or walk—making it difficult to reach food and water despite their insatiable hunger given their ‘fast-growing’ breed. Many die from heart attacks.

After only seven weeks of life, the oversized baby birds who have managed to survive are brought to slaughter. Once there, they are violently shackled upside down while fully conscious and alive, then passed through electrified water before having their throats slit. The process is gruesome—a bitter end to the short lives of these tortured birds.

This is why thousands of consumers are calling upon companies to do the right thing and adopt meaningful animal welfare standards for the chickens in their supply chains.

The inherent cruelty of these standard factory farming practices has been the catalyst for a group of leading animal protection organizations, including The Humane League, to develop a set of standards that will improve the conditions of these broiler chickens. This series of standards is known as the Better Chicken Commitment. The criteria included in the BCC will ensure the upgraded welfare of broiler chickens in a number of ways, including setting a maximum stocking density to ensure each bird has space to sit or stand without being trampled by others, providing enhanced environments for the birds including better lighting and litter, and enforcing more humane chicken processing standards—all allowing chickens to suffer less and to express more natural behaviors. The BCC also requires companies source breeds that demonstrate higher welfare outcomes as certified by Global Animal Partnership (GAP) or the RSPCA Broiler Breed Welfare Assessment Protocol.

Today’s consumers care about animal welfare. Over 160 businesses, including Denny’s, Shake Shack, Subway, and Chipotle, have noted consumer buying trends and are responding by adopting the Better Chicken Commitment. Who will be the next company to sign onto the BCC and show its customers that they care?