According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foodin 2023, chicken meat consumption increased by 14% and remains one of the most chosen meats among the omnivorous population, partly due to its low price compared to other species. Precisely, the increase in demand and this focus on lowering prices has seriously affected how chickens are treated in industrial farming, which is increasingly committed to producing more with fewer resources and, of course, in less time. This is how, over the years, they have been generating e hybridizing chicken breeds to create super-fast growing ones, such as broilers. The price of a broiler chicken in a supermarket can be around 4 euros/kg, while an organic, free-range chicken would amount to almost 12 euros/kg. In Spain there is a clear predominance of broiler chickens over other slower growing breeds.
Fast-growing chickens reach their maximum weight in an average of about 45 days. This would be equivalent to a human baby reaching 300 kilos in its first two months of life (Poultry Science Journal). And this, as would happen with humans, has evidently negative effects on the health, both physical and psychological, of birds. Indeed, it has been shown that the genetic selection to which these chickens have been subjected causes deformities and serious animal welfare problems. Added to this are the overcrowded conditions, which mean that chickens are constantly subjected to antibiotics, in a preventive rather than curative manner, with the negative effects that this has on public health, such as antibiotic resistance, which is estimated will cause 70% more deaths in 2050.
We cannot forget the 42,000 chickens that drowned during the worst of the recent DANA as it passed through Granada or the 600,000 chickens that died in a fire last April in Cuenca, without an established eviction or emergency management protocol that could save them. Although he Royal Decree 524/2023 of June 20, which approves the Basic Civil Protection Standardcontemplates the creation of this type of emergency assistance and management protocols, delegated to the autonomous communities. The number of victims in these two cases makes the overcrowded conditions in which these birds live very visible. Which, unfortunately, also permeates the egg industry, not just the meat industry.
But, realistically, the The deformities and pathologies that chicken victims of the industry develop seem to only be of interest to the general public when they pose a public health problem, a risk to human health. We forget the worst face of industrial farming: the mistreatment and systematic exploitation that chickens suffer day after day for the simple fact of being considered “consumer products.”
According to data collected by organizations such as The Human League and the Animal Welfare Observatory (OBA)there is a pathology that is easily detectable on supermarket shelves: white streak muscular myopathy. This muscle disease affects between 50% and 90% of intensively raised chickens. This condition is associated with mobility problems and extreme suffering in animals, which spend their short lives immobilized in overcrowded spaces. A life designed to maximize profits at the expense of the birds’ well-being.
White stripes are the result of unnatural growth, which causes fat deposits in the pectoral muscles of chickens, reducing their muscle mass and nutritional quality. Therefore, white streaks are not only a sign of poor animal welfare, but also an indicator of low quality of meat. These lines represent fat accumulated in the muscle due to the metabolic imbalance caused by accelerated growth. It has been quantified that the difference represents up to 224% more fat, increasing the calories of the pieces between 7% and 21%, 10% less collagen and up to 9% less protein.
He report published by the Animal Welfare Observatory (OBA), based on the analysis of more than 6,000 chicken trays in Lidl supermarkets throughout Spain, confirms that 98% of the products of this chain present some incidence of white streaks, and that more than 20% show serious signs . Miriam Martínez, animal welfare manager at OBA, warns that “the sale of fast-growing chickens or macrochickens is a scandal for consumers, who are highly aware of animal welfare and who demand quality products.”
The question we should ask ourselves is whether there really are alternatives to this system. On the one hand, there is the European Chicken Commitment, which is a voluntary minimum agreement that advocates the implementation of welfare standards that improve the conditions of birds and allow a progressive transition towards an extensive livestock farming model that is more respectful of the environment. and animal welfare. On the other hand, there would be the end of the use of birds for production, breeding and sale, although I suppose this is still too optimistic.
The increasing presence of white streaks in chicken, the conditions we are seeing on farms and livestock operations, zoonotic diseases, etc., should force us to look beyond and reflect on the system that perpetuates this suffering. It is important to make these problems visible and for consumers to make decisions in the most informed way possible, being able to decide whether to continue supporting a system that systematically mistreats animals, especially those misnamed. farm.
Source: www.eldiario.es
