How to prevent one hour of animal suffering for just one penny

According to the new Comment Document In the diary Nature FoodSome of the world’s worst animals can be prevented in just a few pennies per hour: extreme pain experienced by chickens raised.

Over the past 75 years, chickens have been bred to be incredibly large and incredibly fast. Their rapid growth rate makes chicken the most affordable and richest meat in the United States More than 9 billion are raised and massacred every year.

But this comes at the cost of raising chickens Suffering great pain Throughout the short life of health and welfare issues, Thermal stress,,,,, Heart failureand Lap – Walking difficulties – It can be so severe that chickens die of dehydration or starvation because they can’t even stand it and move to get water and food.

It can be said to be The largest systematic form of animal cruelty Humans have invented it.

Despite the scale and cruelty of traditional chicken farming and other forms of livestock production, animal welfare is largely excluded from food policy discussions. Nonprofit organizations Welfare Footprint Academycomposed of an animal welfare researcher, led the Nature Food paper, hopefully change this by preventing the cost of animal pain.

The team looked at how animals were reproduced, their feeding status, and the frequency and frequency of problems such as injuries and diseases in these systems to determine certain certain types of pain hours they experienced. Scientific research on animal welfare – using behavioral observations, neurophysiological markers, and responses to pain-reducing drugs – informs the work of WFI, where the group’s population-level estimates attempt to take into account differences in individual animals’ experiences.

According to their research, the average factory chicken raising experience:

That was about 700 hours of pain. Considering that chickens raised for meat live only about 1100 hours or 45 days, and sleep most of them, they will feel a certain degree of pain in most of their life when they wake up. The author believes that these painful times represent a “welfth footprint.”

“As consumers, producers, policy makers, investors and advocates, we are able to easily figure out product prices, and now we also have a carbon footprint to understand the impact of the environment,” Kate Hartcher, senior researcher at WFI and co-author, told me, I told me in an email. “So, why don’t animals have the same thing?”

Hartcher and her co-authors believe that a simple change could improve the welfare footprint of chicken meat in exchange for pennies: switch to slower chicken varieties.

Raising chickens slowly and quickly

Over the past decade, animal welfare groups have campaigned for meat producers and major food brands to adopt what they call better chicken promises, which is a Reformed sectors Including slower use of chicken varieties, known to have lower regret rates, heart and lung diseases, heat stress and other problems. It also calls for other changes, such as providing more space for chickens and using a more humanized slaughtering method.

According to the Welfare Footprint Institute, chickens raised under these standards have 33 hours less disability and pain compared to traditional fast-growing chickens. Poultry companies have declined to call for a slower chicken breed because they are more expensive and take longer to reach lower slaughter weight.

But, according to a new paper from the Institute of Welfare Footprint, which was written with researchers at Stockholm Environmental College and the University of Colorado Boulder, is small in terms of the cost of preventing pain. According to their analysis, switching to slower varieties will prevent at least 15 to 100 hours of disability and pain, with producers 45 cents per pound. (Hartcher told me that even this range is a very conservative estimate because it doesn’t solve all the serious welfare issues on the chicken farm.)

In other words, one hour of these intense pain forms can avoid the speed of just half a cent to three cents.

2019, Agricultural Economist Estimated This slower-growing breed raises production costs by 11% to 26%, and raises wholesale chicken prices by 10 to 36 cents. This conversion can moderately increase the price of chickens for consumers, but “rather than focusing on the ‘cost’ of improving animal welfare, we show that pain prevention is small and benefits are huge.”

However, the National Chicken Council is the industry’s leading trading group Oppose slower varieties – Not only on economic reasons, but also on the environment. To meet current chicken demand, the growth is smaller, the U.S. industry needs to raise more birds – an increase of about 4.5 billion birds a year, an increase of about 50%. This also means using more land, pesticides and fertilizers to grow chicken feed, all of which will lead to climate change.

This is Generally speaking realEven if the National Chicken Commission is far from the power of environmental sustainability (the poultry industry is the main one Air and water polluters). The National Chicken Commission did not respond Nature Food Paper.

It is not clear that growing varieties are slower, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and may vary based on specific varieties, feed procurement and agricultural practices. one 2022 Research Emissions were found to increase by 16%, and 2022 Trial Poultry giant Perdue Farms found a 9% increase to 13.4%. according to European Chicken Industry Groupwhen paired with other welfare reforms, the use of slower varieties increases the climate footprint of chicken by 24%.

Regardless of the exact environmental differences, opposing better treatment of animals, as it will slightly increase climate emissions, which means an unsettling position: Raising animals suffering as long as it is better for the climate. In the survey, consumers say they care Similarly or Even About animal welfare rather than sustainability.

However, this logic has proven to be persuasive for influential decision makers. Environmental researchersand Some environmental groups. In 2023, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published Roadmap Regarding how the world feeds a growing population without blowing past climate goals, it writes that the livestock sector “needs to increase productivity by improving genetics” – in other words, using breeds that make animals bigger, faster, and suffer more.

But Hatcher said her and her co-author’s analysis challenged “Given disproportionate and severe animal welfare hazards, with minimal variation in environmental indicators, only environmental considerations can be demonstrated alone to enhance animal yields, including faster growth rates.”

However, the slower shift does present a different dilemma for animal advocates: would it be better to raise all chickens that suffer a lot or more chickens with less chicken?

Ultimately, most animal advocates, as well as some environmentalists, also try to balance the tensions in these tradeoffs by suggesting that we eat less meat and treat each animal better, an approach sometimes called “Less, but better. ”

“In almost all of these situations, you never fall on the best thing.” Cleo Verkuijla senior scientist at the U.S. branch of Stockholm Environmental Academy and co-author of the department Nature Food Paper, tell me. But now, businesses and policy makers can at least illustrate animal suffering, rather than ignoring animal suffering and making more rational (and hopefully, more humane) decisions.