Is your supermarket selling you Frankenchickens?
Find out if your supermarket is selling you Frankenchickens and take action to change the lives of chickens raised for meat.
Find out nowWho’s selling you Frankenchickens?
Find out if your supermarket is selling you Frankenchickens and take action to change the lives of chickens raised for meat.
WHAT IS A FRANKENCHICKEN AND WHY ARE THEY A PROBLEM?
The farming of fast-growing breeds of chicken is arguably the biggest animal welfare crisis in the UK. These breeds are dubbed 'Frankenchickens' for a reason.
Their unnaturally fast growth, caused by decades of intense selective breeding, can cause them many painful health problems.
Even before facing slaughter, Frankenchickens suffer from higher rates of organ failure, lameness, burns from being forced to lie in their own waste, and diseases like white striping in their muscles. In fact, over 1.5 million chickens, mostly Frankenchickens, die prematurely on UK farms every week.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
The Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) is the solution. It is a set of criteria to raise the baseline standards of chicken farming, including the use of healthier, slower-growing breeds, giving the birds more space, natural light, and less painful slaughter methods.
A huge amount of suffering is caused, and could be stopped, by retailers. Supermarkets sell the majority of chickens in the country, which means they call the shots when it comes to animal welfare standards. Supermarkets and other retailers NEED to commit to the BCC.
If supermarkets spearheaded the movement to stop using Frankenchickens, billions of animals could have better lives in the coming years...We must ban the breed that has suffering built in - the status-quo is cruel, wasteful and unjustifiable.
- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Here's the facts.
Only Marks & Spencers and Waitrose have committed to the BCC for all their chicken. So it’s likely that your supermarket is selling you Frankenchickens.
In fact, 90% of chickens raised for meat in the UK are Frankenchickens and most of us aren’t even aware that we’re being sold chickens with suffering coded into their DNA.
Welfare Washing
Customers are being duped into thinking that supermarkets have good animal welfare standards when the reality is different. Labels with photos of happy chickens and wording like ‘happier and healthier’ cause confusion. This is called ‘welfare-washing’.
Read the report
THE PROGRESS SO FAR
What progress has been made?
8/10
supermarkets have committed to increasing the amount of space their birds have by 20%, meeting the stocking density criteria of the BCC.
0companies have signed up to the BCC across Europe, a 15% increase from 2022.
58%
of France’s chicken supply have signed up to the BCC, and 81% of its top fifty committed companies are reporting on their progress. France is a template for all other countries who continue to rely on the use of Frankenchickens.
27
out of the top 50 restaurants in the UK have committed to the BCC, compared to only 20% of the top supermarkets.