How Generations of Selective Breeding Created Miserable Chickens

Genetic selection has made “probably the biggest animal welfare problem we have in all animal husbandry.” By Axelle Playoust-Braure and Paul Tullis

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
How generations of selective breeding created miserable chickens. Genetic selection
has made probably the biggest animal welfare problem we have
in all animal husbandry. By Excel Playustboss and Paul Tullis
Read aloud by Mark Leidorf. The Ross three O eight
is the top selling chicken breed worldwide, common to the

(00:24):
point of ubiquity. The three O eight and its close
relatives account for about two fifths of the twenty two
point seven billion chickens being raised for meat on the
planet on any given day, Most to spend their brief
lives indoors in cramped conditions, suffering injury and illness, unable
to engage in natural behaviors. Behind the three O eight

(00:45):
lie a host of animal welfare concerns that have largely
been ignored over the decades. Its progenitors have been selectively
bred to dramatically reduce costs for producers. These days, they
reach slaughter weight three times faster than dickens did in
the nineteen fifties, But according to numerous peer reviewed studies
in European government reports that breeding has led to an

(01:08):
array of health issues. Leg and skeletal defects appeared first
causing painful lameness and the premature death of bone cells.
These were followed by cardiovascular problems that made mortality rates spike.
More recently, researchers have encountered muscle abnormalities with odd ball
names like woody breast syndrome, pale areas where the flesh

(01:30):
has hardened, and spaghetti meat fibers separating into string like bundles.
The root of those problems lies in the bird's genetic makeup.
The three eights breeder Alabama based Aviagen Group and top rival,
Oklahoma based COB Van Tress, maker of the similar COB
five hundred, which faces similar problems, together control ninety five

(01:52):
percent of commercial breeding stock. These companies don't sell the
chickens that end up in your nuggets, buffalo wings or catcheatory.
They raise the forebears of their breeds for three generations
and sell the parents of the animals raised for slaughter
to chicken producers. Poultry breeding is like a pyramid, and
we are at the very top, says Magnus Swallender, global

(02:15):
vice president of products at Avagen. Aviagen and COB raise
a small number of purebred chickens, then cross and recross
their bloodlines for three generations. Among the traits the producers
want is a low feed conversion ratio, a measure of
how efficiently the animal turns feed into body mass. Food
accounts for up to seventy percent of chicken production costs,

(02:38):
so the less consumed, the better. The so called breeder
birds have far longer lives than the three eight. The
name effectively denotes a model of chicken much like the
Ford F one fifty or the BMW five thirty five,
which is killed, butchered and shrink wrapped at about five weeks.
These purebread animals are prone to suffering from health issues

(03:01):
similar to those afflicting their offspring, according to the European
Food Safety Authority and welfare advocates, but they're typically kept
alive to about fifteen months, producing the chicks that will
grow up to be the forebears of ross three eights.
And in the US at least, choosing organic chicken doesn't
necessarily mean you'll be getting meat from animals that lead

(03:22):
a better life. Almost all USDA organic birds are the
three to eight or similar fast growth varieties. What the
breeder birds must endure is probably the biggest animal welfare
problem we have in all animal husbandry, says Per Jensen,
professor of animal behavior at Sweden's Lingshipping University, the double

(03:42):
helix of DNA is unpredictable, and breeding for desirable traits
such as fast growth or ample breast meat often results
in others that are less desirable, much as breeding golden
retrievers for docility in silky coats frequently results in congenital
hip dysplasia for traits that boost income for aviagen COB

(04:03):
and the downstream production system leads to the genetic consequences
such as bone deformities and impaired mobility that have accumulated
over decades of selective breeding, culminating in breeds such as
the Ross three to eight. To ensure they can keep reproducing,
these breeder birds are often forced to endure chronic hunger,
which causes stress and hyperactivity. They sometimes peck excessively at

(04:26):
the ground, hoping for a tiny morsel or at fellow birds,
harming themselves and others, and to fill their empty bellies.
They drink excessive amounts of water, which can cause excessive
urine to collect on the floor, often leading to foot
and skin problems. A common response restrict access to water.
According to a European Union document, attempts to reduce the

(04:49):
incidence of genetically induced health problems often backfire with slower
growth rates, but Aviagen says it has a program of
multitrait genetic improvement that can ensure both welfare and growth.
We actually select the birds to deliver on health, welfare
and sustainability, which are really really important areas for US,
Swallender says. In twenty twenty three, the European Union's Food

(05:13):
Safety Authority advised the industry to roll back to a
time when the bird's genetic makeup meant they took longer
to reach slaughter weight, saying that the more rapidly a
chicken grows, the worse its welfare. The use of slower
growing hybrids is recommended, the regulators wrote, with particular attention
to breeds with lower mortality, reduced leg weakness and reduced

(05:35):
susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases. A coalition of animal welfare advocates
wants the industry to follow that advice, creating the Better
Chicken Commitment in the US and the Sister European Chicken Commitment.
These ask restaurant and supermarket chains to avoid fast growing
breeds and have offered an alternative list of slower growing

(05:56):
birds they say can be produced more humanely, with showing
eighty four percent of Europeans want better welfare protections for
farmed animals. More than six hundred companies, including Nesley, Subway,
Burger King, and Chipotle have said they'll implement the BCC
by the end of next year. The process won't be
without hurdles. Last November, KFC announced it wouldn't meet its

(06:19):
twenty twenty six deadline for adopting the pledge in the UK,
citing inadequate supply of slower growth breeds. Agricultural industry lobbyists
in the EU and the US are pushing back against
the BCC and ECC. The crux of their argument is
that many problems with the bird's quality of life are
a result of the way farmers raise them, and that

(06:40):
breeders are doing their best to tackle genetics related health
and welfare issues. But scientists have been saying for decades
that the real breakthrough in welfare for broilers all chickens
raised for meat are called broilers, regardless of how they
end up getting cooked, would come from switching to slower
growing breeds. And even some with close ties to the

(07:01):
industry agree Breuler's existence is painful. Michel Tisier Bouchard, president
of the World's Poultry Science Association, an industry group that
includes Aviagen as a leading sponsor, wrote in twenty twenty
and one may question whether such pain is justified by
the human need for protein consumption. Aviagen traces its roots

(07:22):
to Scotland's Chunky Chicks Nichols, founded in nineteen fifty six.
A few years later, an English fishing and frozen foods
concern called Ross Group bought the company and focused on
breeding birds that would put on weight quickly, planting the
seeds of future welfare concerns. The Ross three eight is
the latest in a line that began in the nineteen sixties,

(07:43):
described in trade advertising at the time as the meaty
bird for fast profits. By the seventies, the company had
conquered a quarter of the global market, and in the
nineties it merged with Alabama based Arbor Acres. The combined
business changed its name to Aviagen Group, and in two
thousand five was acquired by e W Group, a private

(08:04):
German company that left Cobb van Tress, a subsidiary of
Tyson Foods with operations in Texas, Kentucky, and Europe as
its sole remaining major competitor. Such concentration, combined with intense
competition between the two and a handful of smaller rivals,
has created powerful incentives to prioritize traits that maximize efficiency

(08:25):
and market advantage. Fast growing breeds like the Rows three
eight and Cobb five hundred, branded as the world's most
efficient broiler, have helped fuel a doubling in chicken consumption
in the US since nineteen eighty five. In nineteen ninety two,
it overtook beef, and today Americans consume an average of
more than one hundred pounds per person per year, equivalent

(08:47):
to about one breast every other day. Aviagen today maintains
more than forty pure lines breeds with specific genetic traits
the company wants passed down into the three O eight
and its companion products at research hubs in the US
and Scotland. The company tightly guards this intellectual property and
denied requests for a visit, citing biosecurity regulations. Its pedigree

(09:11):
farms are the starting point of a cross breeding process
that spans the globe, with the offspring of these pedigree
birds shipped to great grandparent facilities, whose progeny go to
grandparent farms there. Like a scene from an avian handmaid's tail,
Aviagen's end products, day old chicks and hatching eggs that
will grow up to be parent birds are loaded by

(09:33):
conveyor belt into boxes and dispatched to reproduction facilities that
have purchased them. These birds, and those of Aviagen's competitors,
are the ancestors of the seventy billion broilers that end
up on dinner plates worldwide each year, almost two hundred
million a day. We'll be right back with how generations
of selective breeding created miserable chickens. Welcome back to how

(10:00):
generations of selective breeding created miserable chickens. The Refuge Guangwan
sprawls across thirty acres of rolling countryside, a three hour
drive southwest of Paris, with three restored farmhouses and outbuildings
that together form a quiet hamlet. On a balmy afternoon,
almost one hundred animals chickens, pigs, turkeys, cows, donkeys, horses, goats,

(10:24):
dogs and cats roam freely across the sanctuary's pastures. A
human caregiver makes her afternoon rounds, dumping buckets of chopped
apples and carrots on the ground for the animals to eat.
Visitors are invited to stroll along walking paths dotted with
information panels and photos of animal residents, offering stories of
how they were rescued from slaughterhouses, factory farms, abuse or abandonment.

(10:48):
Daisy is a Ross three eight broiler chicken now living
at Guangua the French rendering of oink oinc. She and
eight other Ross three eight chicks just a few days old,
arrived in twenty seventeen from a breeding farm under circumstances
the organization declines to reveal. Guangwuan's director, Caroline Dubois says Daisy,

(11:09):
the last survivor of the birds she came with, suffers
from genetically induced foot problems and receives a care regimen
that includes epsom salt foot bats, and frequent bandaging of
her feet to create a kind of cushion. We put
little boots on her. Dubois says they're actually kid's mittens.
One of Daisy's companions, p Hu, succumbed to severe arthritis

(11:31):
before his third birthday. His foot joint eaten away by
disease a direct consequence of his genetics, Dubois, says Fifi.
Another of the rescued birds died of cardiac arrests during
a health exam. A fourth Gontrand, suffered from leg infections
that Dubois attributes to genetic selection, and died following surgery
to relieve one of them. As chickens put on weight,

(11:54):
their ability to breed declines. That's not an issue with
the birds that end up on our plates because they're
not making chicks. But in the breeding birds it's a problem.
So the breeders face a paradox of their own making.
How to prevent animal's bread to quickly put on weight
from becoming too fat to reproduce. If you full feed
those birds, it will compromise their ability to breed, says

(12:17):
Tierre Roland, director of Aviagen's French operations. Subjecting these birds
to feed restriction artificially keeps breeders alive to reproduce, says
Cynthia Shook Pame, scientific director of US research group Welfare
Footprint Institute. In a twenty twenty two book, the group
called it a band aid solution to a commercial production need,

(12:39):
with a cascade of multiple adverse effects on welfare. Other
studies show that feed restriction elevates stress hormones, which has
implications for the development of the brain and chuck. Pame
says chronic stress in parent birds may impair the immune
systems of their offspring, making them more vulnerable to infectious
diseases such as avian flu. A twenty twenty report from

(13:01):
Eurogroup for Animals, a Brussels nonprofit, found that breeding companies
typically start depriving hens of food after just one week
of life. Initially, they get as little as a quarter
of what they would eat voluntarily. Once they are producing eggs,
their feed is increased, but it remains limited until they
are slaughtered. I don't believe they are hungry all the time,

(13:24):
says aviagen swallender At Guangwa, Dubois finds herself pondering whether
keeping Daisy alive is prolonging her suffering rather than merciful.
Daisy's excessive weight limits her mobility, so she's kept on
a strict diet, denied even the apple slices fed as
treats to the sanctuary's laying hens. With so many animals

(13:46):
in need of rescue, Dubois says in the facility's old farmhouse,
where sanctuary cats are curled up in baskets near the window.
Wouldn't it be better to focus on those that don't
have to endure so much daily suffering. In twenty sixteen,
animal welfare scientists from several non profits developed a set
of standards that would improve the welfare of broilers, which

(14:08):
in twenty nineteen became the Better Chicken Commitment. The widespread
acceptance of the initiative swiftly triggered a counter campaign from
the poultry industry in the US. This is orchestrated by
the Animal Agriculture Alliance, an industry funded lobbying group that
got over a quarter of its budget from the poultry
sector in twenty twenty four. AAA's approach has been aggressive,

(14:30):
reaching down from producers to restaurants, retailers, and even monitoring
activist activity and tactics, As it said in its twenty
twenty four annual report, the group offers restaurants and retailers
lunch and learn sessions with strategies for responding to welfare groups,
and in twenty seventeen it coordinated a hashtag Farmer's Thank
Dominoes campaign on social media celebrating the pizza chain for

(14:54):
refusing to heed activists calls regarding animal welfare in its
supply chain. In twenty nineteen, the organization held an internal
webinar where it advised companies to record information about protesters,
write down their vehicle descriptions and plate numbers, provide to
law enforcement, share with the alliance. AAA has dispatched in

(15:16):
turns to attend conferences on animal rights and compile intelligence reports,
according to documents marked confidential seen by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and
in twenty twenty three, a panel at the organization's annual
meeting focused on responding to animal rights extremism. The group
said in a statement that animal welfare should be handled

(15:36):
by experts and not by animal rights organizations. With goals
to eliminate animal agriculture and consumer choice in Europe, The
Association of Poultry Processors and Poultry Trade, known by its
French initials of K, last year released a fifty six
page report on the costs and Implications of the European
Chicken Commitment in the EU, which asserts that full adoption

(16:00):
of the ECC would significantly increase production costs, pricing out
consumers and leading to increased imports from countries with lower
welfare standards. It also made a climate based argument, claiming
that ECC implementation would increase the sector's emissions almost twenty
five percent based on factors such as transportation and electricity

(16:21):
consumption because of greater use of water, feed and land
for raising less efficient birds. The industry says these arguments
are gaining traction. In a recent issue of Poultry World,
a trade journal, a VEK president gert Jan oplat praised
a new reality at the current European Commission, the executive
body of the European Union. The ECC won't be the

(16:43):
future standard of our industry, he wrote. Activist groups disagree
as you might expect Compassion in World Farming International, a
UK nonprofit, counters that the higher meat quality, lower mortality,
and other factors associated with slow growth breeds could offset
some of the identified economic and environmental impacts in the

(17:04):
AVEK report. The group says farms raising ECC compliant birds
actually outperform conventional operations, citing higher meat quality and less
food waste. Some producers say they've benefited from the transition.
Norsk Killing, which holds almost a third of Norway's retail
chicken market switched to ECC compliant birds in twenty twenty two.

(17:26):
It says it now produces as much meat as it
did with the raws three eight, despite raising twenty two
per cent fewer birds each year due to lower mortality
and more edible meat per animal. Norsk Killing acknowledges that
its feed use has increased since the changeover, but only
by three per cent. The company has been able to
improve animal welfare, climate and the environment without raising prices,

(17:50):
says chief executive officer Hilda Tealseth. Netherlands animal welfare organization
Vakerder has shown that the BCC strategy of bypassing polygy
makers and the breeder industry can be effective. Beginning in
twenty thirteen, a Dutch campaign targeting supermarkets directly pushed retailers
to start demanding birds that grow more slowly. Today, all

(18:12):
fresh chicken available in stores in the Netherlands comes from
slower growing breeds, and it costs about the same as
what's sold just over the border in Germany. The movement
is now paying dividends elsewhere in Europe. In July, the
region's leading chicken meat producer, LDC Group responded to a
three year campaign urging a shift to slower growth breeds.

(18:33):
The company, with six point three billion euros in annual
revenue about seven point four billion dollars, announced its key
brands would comply with ECC standards by twenty twenty eight,
which will affect some four hundred million chickens each year.
The move sends a strong signal to the agrifood industry
as a whole. Brigitte Gautier, director of L two one four,

(18:56):
the group that led the campaign, said in a statement
twenty twenty one, Aviagen adopted a slower growing breed in
case the ECC BCC movement gains further traction. The Rustic gold,
together with other breeds that meet ECC requirements, still represents
less than seven percent of European parent stock production, the

(19:17):
company says, but it's a historic break from the post
war trend of relentlessly pushing for greater output. As the
industry begins yielding to pressure from consumers and steps back
from its creed of more, faster, cheaper, there's some chance
that the chicken of tomorrow will be the chicken of yesterday.
With Tracy Keeling, This story was supported by a journalism

(19:41):
Fund Europe