Aveek Bhattacharya is Research Director at the Social Market Foundation. This article draws on the report ‘Fair or Fowl? The state and future of farmed animal welfare in the UK’.
Britain really is a nation of animal lovers, as Theresa May discovered to her cost in 2017. Among the various factors that led to the loss of her majority were her perceived u-turns on animal welfare, from rowing back on banning ivory sales to plans to hold a free vote on fox hunting.
The ivory ban went viral on social media, and Labour’s pledge to maintain the ban on fox hunting was its most popular manifesto commitment according to one poll. Leaked proposals from Labour’s National Policy Forum earlier this month suggest the party will continue to try and use fox hunting and trophy hunting as a political dividing line in the coming election.
Yet Conservatives have a more positive story to tell when it comes to looking out for animals. The 2021 Action Plan for Animal Welfare laid out a number of steps to recognise and reduce suffering, including legally establishing the sentience of animals.
Critically, the plan didn’t just restrict its attention to cuddly and exotic animals, but addressed the elephant (frankenchicken?) in the room: the animals we eat.
There are almost a quarter of a billion farmed animals at any one time in the UK. For Labour, they seem to be an afterthought compared to the handful hunted by people they don’t like.
By contrast, the Government has already set out its stall to improve welfare during transport, examine the use of cages for poultry and farrowing crates for pigs, improve slaughter methods and incentivise farmers to promote animal welfare. Admittedly, little of this has been delivered yet, but at least it has acknowledges the problem.
That is a laudable achievement, because the size and shape of the problem is far from clear. At the Social Market Foundation, working with the RSPCA, we have been delving into the state of farmed animal welfare in the UK. It has been an incredibly frustrating process, to say the least.
There are credible enough reports to highlight the range of exploitative and cruel practices endured – entirely legally – by the animals we eat: being crammed together in tight spaces, suffering breaks and amputations, enduring burns, heat stress and difficulty breathing.
But it is not generally possible to say how widespread such practices are, or how much of the meat on our supermarket shelves comes from sources that would make most of us uncomfortable.
Exploring this topic has been a shocking experience in many ways, but perhaps the most subtle is this: after months of research, I can’t say with any confidence whether things are getting better or worse – whether the average chicken or pig lives a happier life than their ancestors.
The indications are not encouraging. We can estimate (somewhat crudely) the proportion of animals reared intensively, on so-called factory farms. We reckon they account for around two-thirds of the total: some 155 million factory-farmed animals in the country today. The vast majority, 120 million, are chickens reared for slaughter.
That number has grown dramatically in recent years. The number of broiler chickens farmed in the UK has increased by a quarter in the last decade. Even as people have been cutting down on red meat (often for health or environmental reasons, as well as welfare concerns), they have switched to poultry.
This is alarming, because we found that 95 per cent of chicken is factory farmed – you need to be pretty lucky or pretty discerning to find chicken that hasn’t been intensively reared.
At the same time, there has been some growth in higher-welfare chicken. The number of chickens certified organic, and thus raised to higher welfare standards, has risen by 42 per cent in the past decade. But it remains a drop in the ocean: only two per cent of all chickens are organic.
Moreover, some reports suggest sales of higher-welfare products have declined as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.
From one perspective, it’s obvious what we need to do to reduce farm animal suffering. If we eat less chicken, and particularly less cheap chicken, that will almost certainly be a step in the right direction.
Yet it is unsatisfying to reduce the entirety of the British farming system to a simplistic rule of thumb that writes off all factory farming as equally terrible and implies all other meat is acceptable.
Such an approach means we fail to recognise the hard-won changes in farming practices that make intensively reared animals’ lives somewhat better; nor does it push us to improve the lives of animals that are spared the very worst conditions.
It is natural and understandable not to want to ask difficult questions, and look too closely at where our food comes from. But if we really care about animals, we have to do better.
If we want to understand whether the sorts of policies the Government set out in its Action Plan for Animal Welfare are working, and hold it to account if they aren’t, we need more data.
The Government and industry bodies already collect all manner of data on farm animals – population, weight, disease – but generally only for economic purposes. The Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) should give similar consideration to animal welfare statistics.
It already carries some data on the number of organically-reared animals, and the number of free range egg-laying hens. Yet this tells us little about the bulk of animals not in those categories.
DEFRA should aim to produce, based on a representative sample of farms, estimates of the welfare status of each farmed animal in the UK. Building on the checklists developed by RSPCA Assured or AssureWel, it could give each farm a rating. Animals could be classified as having a ‘good life’, ‘life worth living’ or a ‘life not worth living’, following the definitions set out by the Government’s Farm Animal Welfare Committee.
Such a scheme would allow us to know how many animals exist in low-welfare conditions, just as we know how many children are in schools rated inadequate by inspectors. It could also form the basis of a trusted and reliable labelling system to inform consumers of what they are buying and eating.
Beyond this, it would be good to have data on the indicators beneath the checklist. To see where and whether we are making progress on how densely packed birds are, how many experience decent air quality, how many have their beaks trimmed, how well they can walk, and how many show burns and other signs of physical harm.
The results might be ugly. But real love requires honesty.
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