SEI Senior Scientist Cleo Verkuijl co-authored a study published in Nature Food that quantifies the benefits of switching to raising higher welfare, slower-growing chicken breeds.
Livestock systems globally affect human health, economic livelihoods, and the environment. However, they also affect the welfare of hundreds of billions of animals. While many aspects of livestock processing are addressed in terms of land use, production costs, product prices and water consumption, there still exists a quantifiable gap in measuring the animal experience. The broiler industry, in particular, prioritizes productivity-focused breeding that worsens animal welfare.
This article applies the Welfare Footprint Framework to study the effect of the European Chicken Commitment (ECC), which is a voluntary pledge companies can sign to commit to higher welfare standards such as using slower-growing breeds. Their comparisons revealed that slower-growing birds experience at least 33 fewer hours of intense pain compared to fast-growing breeds. Despite the slightly higher production costs, each additional USD spent per kilogram of meat on ECC-compliant farming can save 15 to 100 hours of intense pain for the chickens.
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