Why has Costco kept its price for rotisserie chickens at $4.99 since they were first sold in 2009, despite inflation? Costco knows that cheap chicken helps to bring customers through the door, who then spend money on other products with greater profit margins. Costco capitalizes on this trend by selling rotisserie chickens in the back of the store. However, the low price point comes at a high cost for the welfare of the chickens, the environment, and public health.

Is Costco chicken good for you?

Costco chickens are raised on factory farms by the tens of thousands. These industrial farms have a profound impact on the environment and public health at large, and have severe implications for the communities directly surrounding the farms.

Some of these effects are far-reaching. Intensive farming operations result in the production of large amounts of ammonia, nitrous oxide, and methane. These emissions drive climate change, degrade soil, and pollute air and waterways. The sheer number of chickens raised on factory farms also requires that feed be brought in from other locations, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Antibiotics are likely to be emitted in the waste that is produced by the farms, driving the antibiotic resistance crisis.

On a more local scale, the dust produced by factory farms is likely to contain various harmful chemicals, feces, and even bits of feathers and flesh. Exposure to this dust has been linked to the development of respiratory diseases. The ammonia-laden odors produced by factory farms also impact on the health and well-being of the workers at the farms and can even affect health in settlements in the near vicinity.1

Why are Costco chickens so cheap?

Costco has consistently sought ways to reduce the cost of producing their rotisserie chickens, and has succeeded primarily by doubling down on factory farming chickens, which externalize costs on the environment, workers, and farmed animals. Costco has also by vertically integrated its supply chain to gain more control and keep costs low, all while resisting calls for higher animal welfare that could increase production costs. In 2018, Costco broke ground on a new poultry processing facility in Nebraska designed to process more than two million chickens per week. Many local farmers, land owners, and advocates united to oppose the multinational company’s “cradle-to-grave” vertical integration, but Costco proceeded over their objections.

The poultry processing facility is part of a larger complex that allows Costco to control the chicken supply chain from the factory all the way to store. The complex cost the company $450 million to construct and is expected to save it up to $0.35 a bird. Though this may seem like a small amount, the chain sells more than a hundred million rotisserie chickens every year, so that adds up to more than 35 million per year in increased profits or potential savings.

Though Costco stands to save money by vertically integrating its chicken supply chain, the cost to local farmers is likely to be high. Before the chickens are slaughtered and processed, most live in warehouses operated by farmers with nearby land. However, the specifications of how the birds are raised remain under Costco’s control. Though Costco markets their business to farmers by suggesting they can expect to pocket upwards of $90,000 a year through these contracts, experts argue that their true income is closer to $60,000.

When it comes to chickens raised for meat, the birds have been bred over generations to grow very quickly. Motivated by reducing costs and increasing profits, this genetic abuse has resulted in severe health conditions and poor welfare. Costco has shown no inclination to use birds with higher welfare genetics. In 2021, Costco announced an updated animal welfare policy following pressure from farmed animal advocates, yet critics have continued to pressure the company to do better, citing environmental and welfare concerns related to their farms.

What’s in a Costco rotisserie chicken?

You might expect the only ingredients in a rotisserie chicken to be chicken and spices, but this isn’t the case. Costco rotisserie chicken lists 11 ingredients on its labels. They are: chicken, water, salt, sodium phosphates, hydrolyzed casein, modified corn starch, sugar, dextrose, chicken broth, isolated soy protein, monoglycerides, and diglycerides.

What are Costco rotisserie chickens injected with?

Many of the ingredients found on the label of a Costco rotisserie chicken are injected into the flesh of the bird. This is typically done to add flavor.

Does Costco rotisserie chicken contain antibiotics?

As part of its animal welfare policy, Costco has signaled that it intends to reduce antibiotic use. A survey it sent to its chicken suppliers found that 97 percent of its Kirkland Signature products (including rotisserie chickens) were raised without the “routine use” of antibiotics that are also used to treat people. However, “routine use” is undefined. If no routine use means that antibiotics are only administered once per flock, that would still mean all birds in the flock received antibiotics. Costco has resisted requests from their shareholders to publish quantitative data showing progress away from the overall use of antibiotics in their chickens. Costco has not released an analysis of their chicken products to support the survey’s results.

Does Costco rotisserie chicken contain hormones?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture prohibits the use of hormones in raising any poultry in the United States. Therefore, the chickens that are slaughtered to become Costco’s rotisserie chickens do not contain any added hormones.

Why are Costco chickens so big?

The average Costco rotisserie chicken weighs three pounds fully cooked. The birds raised for Costco are broiler chickens who have been genetically modified through breeding to grow very large, very quickly. About 100 years ago in 1925, chickens lived for 112 days before being slaughtered at 2.5 pounds. Modern chickens, such as those raised by Costco, are slaughtered at only 47 days but at 5 pounds weigh more than double what their ancestors weighed at slaughter.

Costco rotisserie chickens are what the industry calls “small birds.” Hybrid breeding techniques have also produced “heavy birds,” who are 8-9 pounds when alive and are usually sold cut up as chicken products. All of these birds, large and small, are raised by the tens of thousands on modern chicken farms better known as “factory farms.”

Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media

Avian flu has spread swiftly across farms globally since late 2020, leaving bird populations devastated in its wake and consumers facing higher egg prices. In the United States, the outbreak has resulted in the culling of more than 58.7 million birds across 47 states in a series of more than 830 outbreaks.

The high price of eggs is just one outcome of bird flu. Far more worrying is the possibility that the disease could adapt to human bodies and lead to the next global pandemic. Though eating chicken or eggs is unlikely to lead to illness, experts agree that the pandemic risk of avian flu is real, stemming largely from the way birds are raised on factory farms and the particular breeds of birds that have come to dominate the supply chain.

What is bird flu?

Bird flu, also known as avian influenza or by the names of its various subtypes such as H5N1, refers to a group of viral infections that exist naturally in aquatic birds in the wild. These viruses also have the potential to spread among other types of wild birds and mammals, domestic fowl, humans, and a variety of other animals.

There are four different categories of influenza: types A, B, C, and D. Avian influenza is categorized as a type A virus. The viruses in this category are different from the other three types in part because they spread more easily between species. Type A influenzas can more readily proliferate and have a higher risk of resulting in a pandemic. Categorization is further defined by the animal species from which the virus originated, for example swine flu or, in this case, avian flu.

How is bird flu transmitted to humans?

Most human cases of avian influenza start with close contact between a human and an infected bird, their carcass, their droppings, or their environment. Infections of people with H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, the strain causing the current illness among birds around the world, are rare. Transmission between people has not yet been observed. In February 2023, two human infections of H5N1 occurred in Cambodia, the first in the country since 2014, prompting fears about the widespread bird flu’s potentially rising infectiousness between humans, but these were later attributed to a different form of the virus (clade 2.3.2.1c). However, experts are concerned about future pandemic risk caused by a strain’s capacity to evolve to infect people more easily.

The virus could accomplish this in one of two ways: mutation—in which the virus changes to evade the human immune system’s response, as occurred in the pandemic of 1918—or reassortment—which entails avian flu and a human flu infecting a person at the same time and swapping genes, creating a new and more infectious or virulent strain, as occurred in the pandemics of 1957 and 1968.1

Currently there is no vaccine to protect against contracting bird flu. The seasonal flu vaccine that people are advised to take every year does not prevent the contraction of avian flu.

What are the symptoms of bird flu in humans?

In humans, the virus can cause no symptoms at all, cause a mild illness, or come with a range of indicators ranging from moderate to severe, among them: headaches, fever, sore throat, fatigue, body aches, and even seizures in particularly acute cases. The infection fatality rate of avian flu is much higher than that of COVID-19.

According to the CDC, since 1997 there have been 890 people diagnosed with H5N1, and of these, about half have died from the illness. A different strain of H5 bird flu, H5N6, was identified in people in China in 2014. Since then 81 people across China and Laos have been diagnosed with it. Among those who were hospitalized for the disease, 30 percent died.

What are the symptoms of avian flu in birds?

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, there are several indicators that a flock of birds may be experiencing an outbreak of avian influenza. Symptoms include nasal discharge and sneezing, diarrhea, purpling or swelling of the body, and even sudden and inexplicable death.

On an industrial farm, if avian flu exposure takes place, the entire flock of birds is killed, not just the sick individuals. This is done in an attempt to prevent the spread of disease to other flocks, wild birds, and the people working at the facility. The destruction of entire flocks has contributed to the extremely high number of birds that have been slaughtered as a result of the current avian flu outbreak. Many of these birds are killed in inhumane ways, such as having water-based foam sprayed over them causing them to suffocate, or sealing off their sheds and pumping carbon dioxide into the air. In some instances, birds have also been killed by simply cutting the airflow into their shed and causing temperatures to rise to lethal levels.

How is bird flu diagnosed in humans?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of people have become familiar with swabbing noses or throats for PCR tests. A similar process, in which a sample is collected from a sick person’s nose or throat, is performed when testing for avian influenza. An alternative way of diagnosing bird flu is by testing phlegm that is coughed up by the sick person.

How is bird flu treated in humans?

A person who is suspected of having avian influenza will likely be asked by their doctor to quarantine at home and be given medications to manage the symptoms of the illness. These antiviral medications can help by reducing the severity of the illness while also increasing the chances of survival. Once a diagnosis has been made, there are few options for the ailing, aside from quarantine, prescription antiviral medications, and hoping for the best.

Can you get bird flu from eating chicken?

According to the World Health Organization, there have been rare infections of people who consume dishes with raw, infected poultry blood. However, no evidence suggests that avian flu can be contracted from consuming properly prepared chicken products.

Can you eat eggs from a chicken with bird flu?

No evidence suggests that you can contract avian flu from consuming the eggs of an infected chicken.

Should we stop eating chicken due to bird flu?

While the consumption of chickens and eggs may not place individuals at risk of contracting bird flu, factory farming poultry is a major risk factor in producing the next pandemic. Experts agree that bird flu emerged on industrial poultry farms, and that some bird flu strains have already spread from birds to people. There is consensus among experts that the ongoing industrial farming of poultry makes the emergence of new, more dangerous strains of bird flu—which could more easily spread from bird to humans—far more likely.2 Much of the risk posed by factory-farmed chickens results from their genetic uniformity and the conditions in which they live. The industrial farming status quo gambles with public health. Only with a radical restructuring might raising chickens on farms with a reduced pandemic risk be possible.

Why do factory farms increase risk?

While all factory farms present some risk of causing zoonotic disease, the risk produced by chicken farms is the most severe due to the genetic similarity of the birds, the scale and density of production, the close human-animal contact, and the undermining of the birds’ health and immune systems through selective breeding and poor conditions.

At any given time a single barn on one chicken factory farm is likely to contain over 30,000 birds. These birds live in tight quarters that are ideal for disease transmission, and because they have been bred for efficiency from similar stock they have very similar genetics. The people who work directly with the chickens provide the perfect opportunity for a strain of bird flu to make the jump from chickens to humans.3

How can risk be reduced?

To reduce the risk of pandemics associated with animal agriculture, particularly chickens, we must change the way we eat and farm. Given that many of our recent pandemics originated from animals, including COVID-19, changing animal agriculture will save not only animal but likely also save human lives.4

The changes start with what we eat. Instead of consuming large amounts of chicken and other poultry products, we must shift diets toward plant-based foods. We recommend that people eat conscientiously, as few animals as possible, ideally none. Since some people will continue to eat animals, though, we need to completely reshape how animals are farmed. The chickens currently raised on commercial farms should be replaced with hardier, slower-growing, heritage birds. Another shift that farms need to make is to take a cue from the “social distancing” required by the COVID-19 pandemic and dramatically reduce the density at which the chickens are housed. These measures would make it more difficult for diseases to spread from bird to bird, reducing the chances of human exposure or a mutation that leads to the next pandemic.

Conclusion

Continuing to raise genetically similar birds by the tens of thousands, tightly packed together in sheds, is a recipe for disaster. Though one individual consuming the eggs and meat of these birds is very unlikely to lead to the spread of disease, the aggregate demand of individuals shapes agricultural production. Failing to shift our dietary habits and farming techniques puts all of us at risk.

Photo: Lukas Vincour / Zvířata Nejíme / We Animals Media

Modern-day chickens raised for meat, called “broilers,” are a far cry from chickens just a few decades ago. They consume less food, grow more quickly, and reach a much larger size. The way that chickens are farmed  for their meat today is the result of intense breeding programs that were kickstarted with a contest run by a grocery store in the mid-20th century. As a result of all the ingenuity and invention that has gone into their genetics, chickens suffer immensely during their short lives, and today’s massive scale of chicken production wreaks havoc on the environment.

Broiler chicken history

Up to the early 20th century, chickens were “dual purpose” and raised primarily in backyards to supply both eggs and meat to their caretakers and communities. Unlike today, there were not two separate types of chickens, one for laying eggs and one for meat. This differentiation started in the 1920s but really took off in 1945 due to the “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest organized by the USDA and sponsored by the grocer A&P, which awarded prizes to the flocks that were judged as having the best meat, most efficient feed conversion ratio, and highest growth rate. In order to win, farmers started breeding the largest male and female chickens together, to increase the size of their offspring. The contest enabled the broiler breeder companies that we know today, such as Cobb, Vantress (now collectively Cobb-Vantress), and Hubbard to establish themselves.

By the 1980s and early 1990s, producers were using ever more sophisticated techniques to breed the fast-growing chickens found on farms today—chickens that consume less food but grow larger and faster than birds just 40 years ago. Within less than two generations, chickens raised for meat went from birds pecking around in a neighbor’s backyard to being packed into warehouses by the thousands, unable to naturally breed without being starved.

What birds are considered broiler chickens?

Broiler chickens are those which are raised for their meat. Today there are two companies that control the genetics of most broiler chickens: Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress. Aviagen has bred the Ross line of chickens, which they boast “is the world’s number one broiler breeder brand.” Meanwhile, Cobb-Vantress boasts that their premier line of broiler chickens, the Cobb, is “the world’s most efficient broiler.” Regardless of which line an individual chicken is born from, they experience great suffering that is directly caused by the intense breeding that has taken place in the very recent history of their family tree.

Broiler chicken characteristics

Broiler chickens share a variety of common characteristics. Visually they sport almost universally white feathers. Looking past their physical appearance, however, you can also find a number of similarities in their health and even genetics. When it comes to the actual genetic makeup of broiler chickens, they are all very similar, placing them at a greater risk of disease transmission. On the health front, because of their swift growth rate, broiler chickens are likely to develop a range of issues such as ascites and sudden death syndrome.

What’s the difference between broiler and layer chickens?

Though just a few decades ago chickens were raised for both their meat and the eggs they would lay, today there are specific breeds intended for each purpose. Broiler chickens, those raised to be slaughtered for their meat, grow very large, very quickly. These chickens are usually slaughtered at about seven weeks old in the United States, by which time they have already grown to be about 6.5 pounds. Laying hens, on the other hand, typically live for about 72 weeks before their production drops and they are slaughtered. During peak production they may lay 300 eggs or more a year.

Why are they called broiler chickens?

Broiler chickens, also called “broiler-fryers,” originally got their name from a preparation method common for their meat due to their young age and their more tender flesh. When chickens are slaughtered at an older age, they may be called a “roaster.”

Broiler chicken farming

The reality for Modern broiler chicken farmers are often locked into predatory contracts with large corporations, competing against other farmers to produce the heaviest chickens with the least amount of feed. The farmers that don’t come out on top often struggle to get by, as the corporations require increasingly expensive upgrades to the farm facilities. Much of the poultry industry is run as a “tournament system,” where producers compete against their neighbors and pay is based in part on how much you produce compared to others in your area. This system has left many chicken farmers deeply in debt and has been widely criticized by farmers as predatory.

Will broiler chickens lay eggs?

Historically, chickens eaten for their meat were often from the same dual-purpose breed as laying hens. Even breeds raised primarily for meat, like the Barred Rock, produced edible eggs. Yet if left to their own devices, modern broiler chickens would quickly cease to exist because they are not able to breed without human intervention. Broiler chickens have been bred to rapidly grow to sizes far beyond the range of the chickens raised for food even a generation ago. Birds bred for fast growth lead to medical complications that make breeding, laying eggs, and even living long enough to reach maturity difficult. The birds used to breed broiler chickens need to have their feed restricted to avoid growing to a size that would stop them mating and laying, which means that they live in a state of constant hunger induced by their genetics.1

How long does it take to raise a broiler chicken?

According to the National Chicken Council, modern broiler chickens are slaughtered at an average of 47 days old, having already reached a weight of about 6.5 pounds. They consume about 1.8 pounds of feed for each pound of weight they gain. The modern rate of growth is much faster than it was in 1940, prior to the “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest that launched the genetic modification of chickens via breeding into full swing. In 1940, chickens were slaughtered at an average age of 85 days, having reached about 2.9 pounds, and after consuming approximately 4 pounds of feed for every pound of weight gained.

How long does it take for a broiler chicken to mature?

Broiler chickens are not mature when they are slaughtered at an average age of just 47 days, or less than 7 weeks old. In fact, for Cobb chickens puberty doesn’t even start until they are 12 weeks old. Between 16 and 20 weeks they are in their “grower phase” in which hens increase their weight by a third and reach maturity.

How long do broiler chickens live?

The average broiler chicken is slaughtered at 47 days old. Without very particular care and feed withholding, the likelihood of mortality due to health problems related to their growth or genetics increases from that point onward.

Broiler chicken side effects

Modern broiler chickens are touted by the industry as being extremely efficient “products” within the food system. This level of efficiency comes at great cost, for the birds themselves and the environment as well.

Welfare issues

Crowding

Overcrowding is a huge difficulty for many broiler chicken barns. Such a living situation leads to an increase in inflammation and a decrease in macrophage activity, making the birds more susceptible to disease.2

Transport

For transport to the slaughterhouse, birds are routinely stuffed into crates alongside other birds before the crate is loaded onto a truck. This practice leads to painful bruising, dehydration, and even death.

Slaughter

Once chickens have reached the slaughterhouse, they are killed. Often this process is rushed and rough due to workers being required to move through the process quickly. As a result, birds endure immense suffering, such as not being stunned before slaughter, or even not being slaughtered before they are drowned in scalding hot water.

Bird health issues

Cardiovascular dysfunction

Due to their fast growth, broiler birds often experience heart problems, because their hearts are unable to meet the demands of their bodies.

Integument lesions

Overcrowding is one of the main causes of skin lesions in broiler chickens. This is due to a greater incidence of trampling when seeking food and water. Another source of skin lesions is aggression between chickens.

Ocular dysfunction

Chickens have very sensitive eyes and rely heavily on their sight. The high levels of ammonia in chicken barns can lead to painful conditions such as conjunctivitis, damage to the cornea, and swelling of their eyelids.3

Skeletal dysfunction

A number of different skeletal disorders can be found in broiler chickens, including leg deformities and deformities of the spinal column. Many of these conditions are caused by the swift growth of the birds.

Environmental issues

Ammonia

Ammonia, which contains nitrogen, is released in the droppings of the thousands of chickens housed in broiler factory farms. This nitrogen can ultimately enter waterways and have serious effects on the health of aquatic ecosystems, causing algal blooms and creating dead zones with depleted oxygen levels.

Greenhouse gas emissions

The chicken production sector, including both eggs and meat, releases 0.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases every year. This accounts for 8 percent of emissions from the entire animal agriculture sector.

Manure

Estimates suggest that the poultry farms in North Carolina alone produce five million tons of waste every year, threatening the air and water quality of the surrounding area due to the high levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus the manure contains.

Bird flu is making global headlines. As an H5N1 outbreak ravages the U.S. poultry industry and egg prices reach record highs, scientists are ringing alarm bells that the virus could soon enter a new, more dangerous phase of its evolution. Recent evidence from a mink farm in Spain and the death of a young girl in Cambodia have governments scrambling to prepare for the possibility that bird flu becomes a human pandemic.  

Last week the UK Health Security Agency announced it will be looking into “the disease’s genetic mutations to reveal data about the increased risk to human health from avian flu.” The U.S. government has already stockpiled egg-based vaccines for avian flu, and the country has developed a secret chicken stockpile in undisclosed locations across the U.S. in case we need to make egg-based vaccines quickly—such as during a flu pandemic.

There’s broad consensus among scientists and public health officials that bird flu poses a real threat of becoming a human pandemic. Despite that consensus, most of the public discourse has been limited to how we might prepare for an eventual spillover event. Preparation seems prudent, but what about prevention? Why aren’t we asking the simple question: “What would it take to reduce the pandemic risk caused by poultry farming?”

I suspect the reason this question doesn’t get asked more often is because Big Meat would resist any of the changes that would reduce the risk of a pandemic. That should not deter our advocacy for healthier agriculture systems; we have recent precedent of countries shutting down entire animal agriculture industries because they posed too great a risk to public health.

During the early phases of COVID-19, it became clear that the virus was mutating on mink farms. Some countries took steps to shut down their mink industries rather than risk a more deadly outbreak. While chicken is seen as a more indispensable commodity than mink fur, societies could look carefully at the aspects of poultry farming that pose the greatest risks and outlaw or ban those practices.   

As Farm Forward has previously written, industrial poultry farming poses a unique risk because of its scale, density, geographic distribution, and the genetic uniformity of the animals. To prevent a bird flu pandemic, world governments should take steps to prohibit the specific practices of the industry that pose the greatest risks.

Preventing the next pandemic

To prevent bird flu from becoming a human pandemic, governments and international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) have to look at the aspects of the poultry industry that make it such a unique public health threat. The WHO recently began negotiating a global pandemic accord—which in its first draft failed to mention animal agriculture as the likely source of the next pandemic. Global and national health organizations including the CDC and the WHO recognize that industrial poultry farming poses a significant pandemic risk, so their failure to encourage countries to take steps to mitigate that risk is particularly frustrating. It seems crazy to have to say this, but public health agencies must be willing to name and address the biggest threats to public health.  

We don’t have to wait for national governments and public health agencies to act. We can take steps to protect ourselves from the next pandemic, including switching to more humane alternatives, removing animal products from supply chains, and supporting policies that would phase out industrial scale animal farming. We need to change the way we eat and farm—because the world isn’t prepared for the next pandemic. 

Who could argue with scientifically informed efforts to raise chickens with less suffering? Isn’t less suffering better? And isn’t better, well, better? The nation’s leading animal welfare certification, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), has made news recently by teaming up with animal welfare groups and large food retailers like Whole Foods Market to set genuinely better standards on chicken welfare. The new standards are said to be based on a multi-year study GAP commissioned from the University of Guelph. GAP and its allies have even focused on the most challenging welfare problem in farming today: the chronic disease and deformities faced by virtually all chickens because they have been genetically modified to grow fatter, faster than ever before. Aggressive hybrid breeding techniques over decades have transformed the chicken genome in disturbing ways, so it’s a good thing institutions like GAP are talking about this public secret.

But while some animal protection groups are celebrating GAP’s new standards alongside industry, those of us who have seen “how the standards were made” aren’t smiling. When is better not better at all? When the process of creating slightly improved standards is carefully controlled from soup to nuts to ensure that factory farming continues to be a thriving and globally expanding industry.

GAP’s “better chicken” is a pawn sacrifice. What has in fact occurred is that after decades of runaway genetic modification that have left virtually all of America’s chickens sickly and morbidly obese, the industry is asking the public to accept as “high welfare” these genetically miserable birds because they aren’t as bad as the newest and most widely used strains.

Let’s say you are suffering from chronic pain and you go to your doctor. You are really suffering, so any relief would be welcome, even if it’s modest. Your doctor gives you a medicine that makes you feel 10% better, and you are appreciative. But what if you found out the next day that the “medicine” that is reducing your pain also has addictive properties that ensure that your painful condition will continue forever? And what if you further learn that a complete cure was available for a few dollars more, but was deliberately hidden from you? That’s how I and others feel about the GAP standards (but, yes, they are better).

What the business interests that really control GAP have achieved with GAP’s new genetic welfare standards is a benchmark for “better” that is so low that even factory farms can embrace it—a standard for improvement that is so low, it ensures no real change will occur. Shoppers that can pay a premium get a product that is “better,” and all of us are worse off together.

As a new father, I feel especially passionate about the harm this humanewashing is doing. I believe it is preventing a better future from taking root. The product being washed clean here is perhaps the largest lever the American public has to address the future of infectious disease, pandemic risk, climate change, environmental racism, animal suffering, and more.

Despite the ongoing global growth of industrial farming, I have hope for my son’s generation because I see the signs all around me that the public is waking up to the reality of factory farming. The material conditions sometimes continue to worsen, but there is more will than ever to build a better, more sustainable future for farming. Change is coming. While no one really knows just how much an increasingly food-conscious public will demand, businesses are already bracing to deliver more. The plant-based and cultured meats that have made headlines since at least 2019 when Beyond Meat became the most successful IPO since 2008 are merely the most visible—and may not be among the more important—of these deep changes.

My hope for the future is not in these technologies as much as the ambition to create a more humane and sustainable future that is mixed up with them. My hope is most importantly in the hearts and minds of Americans as they farm, buy, and eat their way into the future of food.

It is precisely this source of hope that humanewashing seeks to attack. Humanewashing isn’t only consumer deception; it’s yet another attack on our better natures. Wanting to be humane is a core part of our humanity. To accept humanewashing, or to shrug it off as a necessary evil, may take more from us than we bargain.

Most Americans remain in the dark about how disastrous animal agriculture has become, and industry knows it needs to change minds fast before a tipping point of awareness is reached. Big Chicken is looking at what happened to Big Tobacco and realizing the case against industrial poultry, especially in an age of pandemics, could be far worse. As the public will to end factory farming is built, industry is proactively defending itself, and humanewashing is a linchpin of their strategy.

It is in this historical context that weak welfare standards like GAP’s are the perfect smoke screen for industry. Whole Foods Market, GAP, and others are blowing that smoke straight up consumers’ arses.

While GAP’s stated goal of at least doing better does set them above industry certifications, the much-hailed study it commissioned was a farce—a performance to justify with the veneer of science an already foreclosed decision to support the status quo. The scientists themselves are innocent. The answers the study provided are answers to the questions GAP asked, but, with few exceptions, GAP only asked questions that would help its industry allies frame as “higher welfare” the most recent genetic offerings from the cabal of genetics companies that control industrial chicken genetics, and thus, the poultry industry, globally.

The truth is that GAP and Whole Foods have so far chosen not to require standards that would significantly improve welfare outcomes—despite having the evidence from their own study that truly meaningful improvements are possible. It is for this reason that after serving on GAP’s board of directors for a decade, Farm Forward resigned in 2020.

There was reason for hope when GAP announced in 2016 that it would establish benchmarks for genetic health, but at the end of a years-long process we’re right back where we started: with chickens who suffer from a range of painful afflictions as a result of their unhealthy genetics. There is not even a whiff of a plan to end this absurd and unsustainable situation, but meanwhile, GAP is trumpeting that it is “reinvent[ing] the modern day broiler chicken.” It wouldn’t be the first time that “new and improved” really means more of the same.

Whole Foods Market and GAP’s humanewashing is leading consumers to believe that they can purchase chickens from Whole Foods who do not suffer because they have been genetically modified for fast growth in ways that are known to produce leg deformities, muscle myopathies, and weakened immune systems. The reality is that chickens within GAP’s program will still suffer in these same ways, just slightly less. By contrast, the factory farm corporations and the retailers that profit from their products are almost certainly earning much more, or at least deflecting criticisms that might have forced them to change. GAP’s “better chicken” is better for business, but consumers, public health, the environment, and, of course, the chickens themselves are not necessarily better off when factory farmed products are viewed more favorably. Sometimes, promising to be better is really just the lie someone tells when they aren’t yet ready for real change.

Lead image credit: We Animals Media

One of the nation’s largest animal welfare certifications, the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), recently signaled its commitment to continuing to use genetically modified “hybrid” chicken lines that create chronic animal suffering and increase public health risks.1, 2 More than in the past, GAP seems dedicated to passing off low welfare standards as the gold standard, thus helping the purveyors of factory farmed products deceive shoppers. Details of the latest chicken study by GAP are illustrative of how this certification scheme, which does offer animals some real protections, still often functions to deceive the public.

The, performed at the University of Guelph, was intended to help GAP establish breed criteria for its multi-tiered welfare program. However, the study included only growth-accelerated breeds known to have welfare problems, such as heart and lung stress, obesity, and musculoskeletal issues.3, 4, 5 The study failed to build in any meaningful control group, giving researchers no “baseline” of what a normal bird—that is, a non-hybrid, or “standard-bred,” bird—would look like. This leaves open the possibility that today’s allegedly high welfare chickens actually suffer more than chickens did in the first half of the 20th century.

Why would GAP omit a meaningful control group? The impression one gets is that before the study was conducted, GAP was committed to using only hybrid lines of birds that have a wide range of welfare problems, from reduced mobility to footpad lesions. GAP’s study was useful in establishing that faster growing birds suffer more than slower growing birds, but, strangely, it formally excluded the slowest growing birds that its own results suggest would have the highest welfare.

The omission of standard-bred breeds is telling. It appears that GAP’s forthcoming recommendations specifying which lines of birds can be considered “high welfare” will not seek to optimize welfare as consumers understand it, but rather will approach welfare as understood by industry. Instead of helping consumers identify products that meet their understanding of humane, GAP has committed to maximizing profitability by helping sell consumers on whatever industry has decided it wants to market as humane.

Reducing suffering is vitally important, especially given the limits of the change now possible. To disparage suffering reduction efforts is to forget what it is like to suffer. However, this does not give suffering reduction efforts license to deceive consumers. A tiered standard like GAP’s purports to reflect the full spectrum of what is possible, not a range that runs from bad to worse, but GAP seems to be content simply iterating on the bottom rung. To imply that GAP is doing more is to risk humanewashing.

Consider a metaphor. It’s as if GAP leadership is so afraid of finding an ace or a face card—the high welfare outcomes of a standard-bred bird—that they stacked the deck to ensure that any hands dealt would include only numbered cards. They then studied a number of rounds of poker play, watching for winning hands at the table and taking careful notes. Soon they will build their certification standards around the winning hands dealt from the numbers-only deck, as if they are the best hands in all of poker. Consumers are being dealt a pair of tens but being told it’s a royal flush.

Or think of it this way: If a doctor were to evaluate various treatment outcomes for patients with broken bones, you would expect them to begin by studying treatments that heal bones completely. If the doctor only studied treatments that heal bones partially, the doctor may conclude that patients who end their treatment with little pain but no flexibility, or full range of motion but bones too brittle for normal use, are actually achieving the best outcomes.

Analogously, the welfare improvements seen in the GAP study may amount to meaningful improvements in welfare outcomes, but without including a baseline for what is possible, we simply cannot know how meaningful the improvements truly are. The welfare gains documented for slower-growing hybrid strains that appear substantial when compared to the fastest-growing strains may be meaningful, but, put in context, they are also a clear case of attempting to make a small improvement to justify a larger injustice. Offering consumers concerned with welfare hybrid birds who suffer slightly less is the pawn sacrifice meant to preserve factory farming for generations to come.

The omission of genetically uncompromised birds is glaring and revealing. It suggests that GAP is unwilling to look at, and thus incapable of even describing, what high welfare farming looks like at all. GAP is apparently content to rank the dismal factory farm operations currently available. Consumers want to see an industry in line with basic ethical values, and GAP is offering them “the best of the factory farm,” functionally becoming an advertising agency for factory farmed products.

The announcement accompanying the release of the limited study data claims proudly that GAP is in the process of “reinventing the modern day broiler chicken.” The modern broiler chicken, however, is the problem! “The modern broiler chicken” is another way of saying growth-accelerated, hybrid birds. It pretends that this recent, strange, and cruel form of breeding birds (through growth-accelerated hybrid genetics) is all there is, which is highly deceptive. GAP is reinventing the problem rather than ending it.

The potential value of a certification like GAP’s is that it could use its multi-tier system to dismantle big poultry in a phased and incremental fashion. Instead, it’s shoring up the use of genetically modified hybrid birds who suffer immensely (even if some suffer less than others).

Without including an optimal standard, the Guelph study results only give us a narrow snapshot of low welfare strains of birds, which are now, in proper Orwellian fashion, being referred to as “high welfare” and “slow growth.” The study can provide no information about what optimal chicken breed health looks like. Without a standard for highest welfare, the results of the study are a farce. Any tiered certification built around them will be designed to deceive.

It’s past time for GAP to do better.

Take action: Tell GAP to truly raise the bar for broiler genetics with a quick tweet today.

Image credit: We Animals Media

My grandmother is in her nineties and my sister, who is only in her thirties, has an autoimmune disease, and works in medicine. I don’t need to spell out the risk they are in because of COVID-19. And I don’t need to know who is reading this to assume that you have a similar list of loved ones. It is more than reasonable in such times to limit our focus to simply making it through coming months. Yet it is precisely the precariousness of the lives of people we love that make it unconscionable to postpone taking actions that could dramatically reduce the risk of another pandemic. The magnitude of suffering our actions now could reduce is simply too great.

The CDC reports that 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals.1  We’ve all heard about wet markets and their probable role in the emergence of COVID-19. Many are wisely calling for various forms of bans of wet markets and the Chinese government has already banned meat from wild animals at them. Yet an equally great, or possibly greater, risk factor for another pandemic well-attested in the scientific literature has received surprisingly little attention: the particularly striking role that industrial poultry plays. Commercial pig operations are also implicated with notable frequency, and other aspects of agricultural production figure as well, but industrial poultry is for pandemics what fossil fuels are for climate change.

The crux of the issue is that we know that most of the influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered “of special concern” by the CDC emerged from commercial poultry operations. Read that sentence twice.

We also know why industrial poultry is so efficient at producing novel viruses. Tens of thousands of genetically identical birds, along with their excrement, are packed in a single building creating an environment ideal for viral mutation.

Significantly, all these birds are immunocompromised. Novel “hybrid poultry” breeding techniques that became widespread in the 1970s created fast-growing genetic strains that are now the exclusive basis for the global industrial chicken industry, but these techniques simultaneously devastated the immune systems of the chickens and turkeys we eat. No other farmed animals have been so dramatically re engineered at the genetic level. Industry opts to keep these fundamentally diseased birds alive through controlled environments, constant use of antibiotics, or simply killing them before the full pathology of their genetics has manifested.

The modern poultry industry is a perfect storm for a pandemic plague: an ideal environment for pathogens, ideal almost-identical hosts with fragile immunity, ideal conditions of filth and feces, and on a mind-boggling scale.

Globally there are fewer than 100 million cattle, perhaps 2 billion pigs, but more than 23 billion of our food units are individual chickens (up from 14 billion in 2000).2

We are fortunate that scientists understand the viruses that cause pandemics as well as they do.  They can tell us, for example, that on April 9, 2020 the USDA identified a highly pathogenic H7N3 avian influenza in the U.S. for the first time since 2017—they can even tell us it was detected in a South Carolina commercial turkey flock.3  The CDC reports that H7N3 has “primarily caused mild to moderate illness in people.”4  It is strange to consider that good news, but it is.

Had they detected another virus on the watch list, H5N1 (bird flu), we would be facing the imminent possibility of a pandemic that would make coronavirus look mild. The CDC reports that H5N1 kills humans at roughly 30 times the rate that COVID-19 does—a 60% mortality rate.5  And unlike COVID-19, H5N1 does not spare children.

Thankfully, we can make ourselves and our families safer, far safer than if we limit our concern to the wildlife trade and wet markets. Eliminating the industrial poultry industry in favor of extensive farms or alternative proteins is literally in the best interests of every human being.

Banning industrial poultry does require, what some might call, a sacrifice: chicken and turkey would return to their historically higher price, which is closer to beef. Is more expensive chicken worth the sacrifice? There is a seesaw: on one side is the modern industrialized poultry industry and the likelihood of another pandemic, and on the other side is greater reliance on other protein sources, a return of actual poultry farming, and a guaranteed safer future. We are currently barreling toward another pandemic. The current White House is even likely to direct most of the $14 billion in much-needed aid slated for agriculture in the COVID-19 stimulus package to support the very forms of agriculture that make a pandemic more likely.6

By contrast, political leaders like Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have started, quite sensibly, to speak about a moratorium on building new industrial farms. This would indeed be progress, for the growing poultry industry spells growing pandemic risk. But is maintaining the threat of another pandemic at its current high level the best we can do?

If the science really does show the poultry industry is a major risk factor for pandemics, as I suggest is beyond doubt, why would we hesitate to ban industrial poultry? If this pandemic risk were about how how we produce cars or computers would we hesitate to demand a change? The issue may very well be that it is not about chickens at all, but the industry their lives suffer to serve.

Our relationship with food is complicated, emotional, and intimate—perhaps with meat especially. Chicken soup is supposed to be soothing. Turkeys help us celebrate Thanksgiving. We make our food choices for complex reasons, but public health does not figure high on the list. Yet we cannot let our nostalgia over soup mislead us with stakes so high.

The production of any product through methods that menace the planet with another pandemic should be ended. Industrial poultry barely existed two generations ago and our generation should be the last to tolerate it. Building the political will to ban industrial poultry will be hard, even to imagine. Real change always is. Yet, if the present moment teaches us anything, it’s that everything can change. There is no exemption for industrial poultry from this immutable law. It is, simply and profoundly, our choice.

Reduce the risk. Pledge to End Big Poultry now.

Recently Farm Forward met with Perdue Farm’s executive team and several of the company’s contract farmers, touring some of their farms and facilities in Salisbury, Maryland at Perdue’s third annual Animal Care Summit. Each year, this summit invites candid discussions about Perdue’s progress on animal welfare and provides a chance for Perdue to consider new ideas from farmers and animal advocates. This year, attendees discussed everything from higher welfare genetics to the opportunity for Perdue to diversify into plant-based and blended proteins. Farm Forward welcomes Perdue’s ongoing commitment to transparency and dialogue. Perdue has shown leadership among poultry companies on antibiotics and we applaud their current leadership on animal welfare.

The summit included a tour of a research farm where Perdue works toward improving animal welfare—they have identified slower-growing, active breeds high in welfare indicators that also receive top marks in taste and meat quality. Farm Forward is encouraged by the possibility that improvements in genetics may result in lower incidents of white striping and woody breast, and that improved meat quality may offset higher production cost (as a result of birds living longer). As we await Perdue’s forthcoming research on different breeds, we will continue to inform consumers about the welfare benefits of slower-growth genetics.

For more than a decade, Farm Forward has advocated that genetics should be the cornerstone of efforts to improve poultry welfare. Our advocacy led to a landmark announcement by Global Animal Partnership (GAP) to require higher welfare genetics for all poultry in the GAP program, a change that will impact more than 300 million animals per year. Perdue is the only major poultry company that has committed to improve animal welfare through genetics, and their progress ahead of their 2024 commitment is impressive.

At the summit, Perdue also discussed Controlled Atmospheric Stunning (CAS)—a slaughtering technology with clear benefits for animal welfare, workers, and production efficiency. Perdue has implemented CAS in one of their processing plants and has committed to installing it in all of their slaughterhouses. Farm Forward strongly recommends that other poultry companies adopt CAS or other similar technologies to reduce stocking density in their operations.

Perdue has shared data about the changes they have been making throughout their operations, even when that data isn’t flattering. This level of transparency is in stark contrast to what we’ve seen from other poultry companies, which have not committed to the same level of animal welfare improvements (or even, in the case of Sanderson Farms, to reduce antibiotic use), nor to engage with advocacy groups meaningfully. We look forward to supporting Perdue on their evolution toward improved animal welfare!

Colleges and universities all over the country have begun leveraging their purchasing power to build more sustainable food systems. The 23-campus California State University (CSU) system has joined the Real Food Challenge, committing to sourcing 20 percent of their food from sustainable sources by 2020. The Real Food Challenge also includes a commitment to source meat, eggs, and dairy from farms that raise animals in higher-welfare conditions. Like other Real Food Challenge members, the CSU campuses have made progress toward their 20 percent commitment, but goals and commitments in the abstract are no match for a first-hand view of where our food comes from. For this reason, many campuses with questions about animal welfare and third party certifications are taking a closer look at more humane farms.

Last month, Farm Forward led a group of CSU food service directors, sustainability coordinators, students, and regional staff from Sodexo on a tour of Mary’s Chicken, a certified higher-welfare poultry operation in Fresno, CA. Mary’s is a family-owned company that raises Global Animal Partnership (GAP)-certified chickens and turkeys and operates a hatchery and processing plant.

The tour allowed dining directors and students to see three different farms that raise birds in progressively higher-welfare conditions. The first was a GAP Step 3 farm, which raises fast-growing Cornish Cross birds (42 days to market weight) in large barns where they are given natural light, seasonal access to the outdoors, and approximately 25 percent more space than birds raised on conventional farms. (By comparison, birds on conventional farms receive no natural light or outdoor access.)

Touring Mary’s Chicken facilities in Fresno, CA

Next up was a stop at a GAP Step 4 farm, which raises slower-growing birds (approximately 60 days to market weight) and provides year-round access to pasture. Even at first glance, the most obvious difference was the birds themselves—they looked healthier and were more active, perching on hay bales and foraging outside on the pasture.

The slower-growing birds on Mary’s Step 4 farms are genetically healthier than the Cornish Cross birds, who suffer because of their rapid growth. Today, fast-growing Cornish Cross birds are raised on 99 percent of all chicken farms in the U.S, but a major shift is underway in the chicken industry. Because of pressure from consumers and advocates, dozens of companies, including Compass Group, Aramark, and Sodexo, have committed to buy chicken that comes exclusively from slower-growing birds by 2024.

“This tour provided me with a lot of enlightening knowledge about higher welfare poultry farming and further encouraged my efforts to increase the amount of humane products served on our campus,” Rebecca Pope, student researcher for the Real Food Challenge at CSU Monterey Bay. “The benefits of sourcing products like Mary’s are worth the effort it takes to make them available and I hope that other CSU students continue to work to get more sustainable and just food options offered on their campuses.”

The day ended with a tour of Mary’s new slaughterhouse, which processes over 150,000 chickens each day. Particularly noteworthy is how Mary’s stuns the chickens before they are slaughtered. Most processing plants in the U.S. hang live birds upside down by their feet and stun them in electrified water baths. Mary’s is one of just a handful of plants nationwide that uses a multi-stage, controlled atmospheric system to stun birds. One of the major advantages of these systems is that conscious birds are not handled by employees. Controlled atmosphere stunning is widely accepted to improve welfare for chickens at slaughter, and although many companies, including Sodexo, have committed to using controlled atmosphere systems, it will likely be many years before the technology is widely used throughout the industry.

“The tour offered us a chance to see the way chickens can be raised. I think the tour motivated everyone to learn more about the chicken that’s served in the dining halls and find ways to incorporate higher-welfare options,” Rosie Linares-Diaz, the West Coast Coordinator for the Real Food Challenge. “What’s great is that more humane products are available on a scale that can meet the demands of the CSUs. I hope to see these kinds of products on all of the CSU campuses in the near future.”

Farm Forward organized the tour as part of our outreach for the Leadership Circle—a new program that helps universities, companies, and institutional buyers improve animal welfare in their supply chains. The Leadership Circle provides technical assistance, resources, and free consulting to institutions that commit to sourcing animal products from farms with a third-party animal welfare certification.

CSU campuses tour Mary’s Chicken in Fresno, CA

The Leadership Circle also encourages members to support farms that raise animals in the best possible conditions. When it comes to poultry, the highest-welfare farms raise heritage breed chickens and turkeys. Heritage birds grow at a normal rate, can thrive outdoors, and are the only turkeys that can reproduce naturally. As it happens, Mary’s is one of the few farms in the U.S. that raises GAP Step 5-certified heritage turkeys. Chefs and culinary professionals have long recognized heritage birds as the best tasting, and we hope to see them appear on university menus in the coming years.

Farm Forward staff looks forward to working with schools in the CSU system to help them source higher-welfare products and meet their Real Food Challenge goals.

To learn more about the Leadership Circle and Farm Forward’s work with universities and institutions, visit our website.

Today, chickens that grow at roughly three times the rate of the chickens our grandparents ate account for more than 99 percent of the chicken meat sold in the United States. The quality of chicken meat has suffered and chicken welfare has paid a terrible price. As consumers have grown more conscious about how their food is produced many have signaled their willingness to pay a premium for birds with less severe health problems raised on higher welfare farms.

Businesses have taken notice and the last six months have seen major foodservice and restaurant companies such as Compass Group, Aramark, Chipotle, Panera, and Starbucks commit to phasing out the fastest growing strains of chickens, often coupling that change with lower stocking densities and requirements that birds have at least some exposure to natural light. While consumer advocates hail these changes as groundbreaking, recently the National Chicken Council (NCC) published a report that attempts to arrest this momentum. The NCC report makes dubious claims, lacks citations for its calculations, is not peer-reviewed, and was written by Elanco, a major feed supplement and pharmaceutical manufacturer. Unsurprisingly, it comes to the peculiar conclusion that it would be better if consumers kept quiet and trusted the wisdom of industrial agriculture.

Consumers are unlikely to do what NCC wants for a number of reasons:

Reason One: Animal Welfare

Dozens of peer-reviewed studies demonstrate a clear link between faster growth and increased problems with animal health and welfare.1Today’s fast-growing chickens and turkeys are sick. They suffer unnecessary and painful problems with skeletal development, heart, and lung function2, obesity,3 and more—all issues that were unheard of in the standard-bred heritage breeds that were the norm prior to the introduction of “hybrid breeding” in the 1950’s. This is why antibiotics and other drugs have become a regular feature of poultry production—factory farming could not exist without them.

Reason Two: Human Health

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that each year almost a quarter of the people hospitalized from contracting bacterial born illnesses were sickened by eating meat or poultry. Nineteen percent of all deaths related to foodborne illness are caused by poultry—the most deaths of any food category.4

Reason Three: Environmental Degradation 

The poultry industry is also a major cause of environmental degradation. A case in point is the Chesapeake Bay, which has been polluted by broiler chicken production from the adjacent Delmarva Peninsula. Maryland and Delaware alone produce roughly 523 million chickens a year, and much of the feces they produce ends up polluting the nation’s waterways.5While slower-growing broilers may require more intensive water and land usage, the true external costs of the overall environmental impact of factory farmed broilers is not acknowledged or addressed from within the industry.

We have a poultry problem in the United States, and it’s not getting any better. Returning to traditional ways of producing poultry may be the only way. As we work to build a post factory farm poultry industry, we work to build a better system not just for animals, but for human health, farmers, and the environment, too.

Consumer Demand for A Better, Healthier, More Humane Food System 

Increasingly consumers are demanding greater transparency in the food system. A recent Food Marketing Institute report documents that “consumers increasingly indicate an interest in the way animals are treated…. [W]hen it comes to attributes beyond those that render personal benefits, shoppers prioritize animal welfare second only to employment practices.”6

As evidenced by the increase in demand for certified organic, cage-free, and heritage animal products, many consumers are not only ready but eager to pay a fair price for food raised in ways that protect animal health, public health, and the environment. Smart companies continue to pay attention to farm animal welfare, as reflected in The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare 2016 Report.7This change has been attributed to demand from customers, investors, and forces within the companies themselves. Since the first Benchmark in 2012, the proportion of all companies with a published farm animal welfare policy has increased from 46% in 2012 to 73% in 2016.8

The NCC would do well to face the facts and deliver a product in line with American values, rather than obfuscate and delay the inevitable, as it unsuccessfully attempted with the now well-established trend toward cage-free eggs. Slower-growth and heritage chickens are inevitably part of the broad consumer shift toward higher welfare, and in building a food system that we can all support.

In an effort to increase transparency, Perdue Foods, one of the largest poultry producers in the U.S., has announced revolutionary animal welfare standards that will impact more than 600 million birds per year. Most importantly, this plan recognizes what Farm Forward has been saying for over a decade: chicken genetics are the key to rebuilding a more humane and sustainable poultry industry. Their unprecedented Four-Part Plan is the most comprehensive animal welfare policy to date in industrial agriculture. Inspired by the “Five Freedoms”—animal welfare standards defined by Farm Animal Welfare Council—Perdue’s plan addresses space requirements, natural light, and increased activity levels for chickens. It also acknowledges the necessity of making farmers part of the solution, an issue Farm Forward has championed for years.

As the first national organization to focus on poultry genetics, Farm Forward has made genetically healthy birds a cornerstone of our work. We spearheaded the movement that led to a recent historic announcement by the nation’s leading farmed animal welfare certification, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), which has pledged to phase out by 2024 the fastest-growing strains of chickens currently accounting for more than 99 percent of chicken meat sold in the U.S. More than 600 chicken farms currently use the GAP standard, affecting the lives of 277 million chickens annually. This pledge also includes a commitment by Whole Foods Market to follow these new standards. Thanks to our perseverance, major companies like Perdue are now starting to listen. This new commitment by Perdue is so astonishing because it is poised to impact almost a billion chickens every year.

We’ve also worked for years to increase the demand for higher welfare poultry products —our tool BuyingPoultry is the first authoritative rating system and database of poultry products and plant-based alternatives sold in the United States—and are encouraged that one of the largest chicken producers in the country is finally talking about taking about moving in the direction that we have long advocated.

The specifics and timelines surrounding Perdue’s announcement are vague—we know that watchdog organizations are required to ensure that animal welfare is a true priority and not an empty claim to gain consumer loyalty—but if Perdue does follow through on its plan to improve animal welfare standards and relationships with farmers, it will set a strong precedent that other food producers won’t be able to ignore.

When Farm Forward began talking about poultry genetics nearly ten years ago, we were on our own. Thanks to our dedication and hard work, massive companies like Perdue Foods and Whole Foods Market have now pledged to improve animal welfare through genetics. Change is coming.

We can only continue this work with your support. Please consider making a donation today or join us to learn more about our work to end factory farming.

In yet another sign that sweeping change is afoot within the poultry industry, today the nation’s leading farmed animal welfare certification, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), announced a landmark pledge to phase out by 2024 the fastest-growing strains of chickens, which currently account for more than 99 percent of chicken meat sold in the U.S. Advocacy group Farm Forward pioneered the efforts that ultimately led to today’s historic announcement, which includes a commitment by Whole Foods Market to follow the new standard.

As the first national organization to focus on poultry genetics, Farm Forward has pushed to make the return to genetically healthy birds a central aspect of GAP’s 5-Step® standards since GAP’s inception. Last year, these efforts led to a change effectively requiring producers at the highest Step to use heritage turkeys (turkeys with optimal welfare) and refrain from caging or feed-restricting breeder turkeys, practices used universally in conventional breeding facilities.

“This is the proudest I’ve ever been of GAP,” said Steve Gross, Farm Forward’s Chairman and a founding member of GAP’s Board of Directors. “In the early years of GAP, genetic requirements only appeared within the highest tiers of our program; today marks a historic moment in making genetic health a mainstay of GAP’s standards from top to bottom.”

“The message sent by GAP and Whole Foods is unequivocal,” said Ben Goldsmith, Executive Director of Farm Forward. “For too long the poultry industry has manipulated the genetics of these animals in ways that have terrible consequences for their welfare. As a result of pushing chickens and turkeys past their genetic limits, the birds experience chronic pain, diminished immune health, and debilitating cardiovascular and bone disorders throughout their entire lives. It’s simply unacceptable.”

Farm Forward’s work from within GAP is only one facet of its broader strategy to fundamentally improve poultry welfare by focusing on genetic health. Following Farm Forward’s early work with Chipotle to use heritage chicken meat in a test market, an increasing number of companies have promised a return to genetically healthier poultry. Recently, Starbucks committed to focus on eliminating “fast growing practices” in its poultry supply chain, and Nestle, the world’s largest food manufacturer, committed to address the welfare implications of fast growth as well.

“The rise in consumer and institutional interest in seeking a return to healthier poultry genetics is a massive win for animals,” said Goldsmith. “The rise of the slower-growth movement means that the future is brighter for chickens and turkeys in American agriculture than it has been since the earliest days of factory farming.”

Donate now and help us improve the lives of farmed animals!

Contact: Ben Goldsmith

Full PDF of Press Release Available Here

Every Thanksgiving, we gather with our family and friends to celebrate what we’ve been thankful for in the past year. Thanksgiving, more than any other American holiday, also invites us to reflect on the food we put on our table. For those of us who oppose the cruelty and waste of factory farming, the traditional turkey is an unbefitting centerpiece.

In the not-too-distant past, farmers needed their animals to be as healthy as possible in order to turn the greatest profit. That changed when the industry realized that with factory farms, “you don’t need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable.”1 Now virtually all turkeys found in supermarkets are produced on factory farms. These birds grow 65 percent larger in 60 percent less time than turkeys produced in 1935,2 and this “efficiency” comes at a heavy price: factory-farmed turkeys are unable to fly or reproduce on their own and often cannot walk normally.3 The majority of them suffer from skeletal deformations, metabolic disorders, and weak immune systems.4 To make matters worse, no law protects them from even the most egregious abuses during slaughter.5 And this year, the worst avian flu outbreak on record led to the deaths of millions of turkeys across the country.6

“Absence of turkey can be a very positive thing,” says Mark Bittman, former New York Times food columnist and author of Food Matters.7 “Most people have roughly 360 dinners a year that have ‘absence of turkey.’ We eat it on Thanksgiving because we’re supposed to.”

Jonathan Safran Foer, a Farm Forward board member and the author of Eating Animals, also wonders if we need a turkey at all:

At the center of our Thanksgiving tables is an animal that never breathed fresh air or saw the sky until it was packed away for slaughter. At the end of our forks is an animal that was incapable of reproducing sexually. In our bellies is an animal with antibiotics in its belly. The very genetics of our birds are radically different. If the pilgrims could have seen into the future, what would they have thought of the turkey on our table? Without exaggeration, it’s unlikely that they would recognize it as a turkey.”8

Thanksgiving turkeys account for nearly 15 percent of the 300 million sold each year. The decision not to serve meat from factory farms at Thanksgiving, when made by enough conscientious consumers across the country, will send a powerful message to the industry that factory farming is unacceptable. The fact that we have the opportunity to decide for ourselves what to eat this Thanksgiving is not something to take for granted. We have the privilege of choice—what choice will we make?

Eating with your values in mind this Thanksgiving does not mean you have to go hungry. There is a small market for pasture-raised, heritage turkeys—like those produced by Frank Reese’s Good Shepherd Ranch—but the supply is minuscule. Good Shepherd Ranch, for example, sells out six months in advance of Thanksgiving. Many consumers find it easier to simply drop meat from the menu.

So what should our most thanks-filled meal of the year look like? From coconut-mashed yams to stuffed acorn squash to lentil cranberry loaf, Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food blog, Food & Wine, Whole Foods, and the New York Times all offer an abundant array of plant-based holiday recipes.

Our goal at Farm Forward is to look beyond factory farming and move our systems of food production in a better direction. To this end, and just in time for Thanksgiving, we launched BuyingPoultry, a free online buying guide that makes it easy for you to find the highest welfare products available. With the help of BuyingPoultry, you can join the fight against factory farming every time you visit the grocery store. None of this work is possible without your help: Keep the momentum going by making a donation today!

This Thanksgiving, use BuyingPoultry to find higher welfare poultry products and plant-based alternatives near you.

Have you found a way to eat according to your conscience this year? We want to know!

Share your plans for (or stories from) a conscientious Thanksgiving meal by contacting us, commenting on our Facebook page, or tweeting @FarmForward, and your celebration could be featured on our website. (Some of our favorite submissions are below.)

Your Thanksgiving Stories:

Especially at holidays that are notorious for their waste of food, we make it a point to eat vegetarian. —Czikus

Our 10 year old Charlotte knows we never eat meat from factory farms even on Thanksgiving. Our tradition is being in charge of finding a turkey for when we travel to our family gatherings. But this year we are staying home. Charlotte has been sharing how we eat with her best friend. —Mandy

While I don’t eat poultry, my husband and his family do, so we ordered a heritage turkey to be delivered to his parents the day before Thanksgiving. It’s more expensive, but a great way to say thanks to my in-laws for hosting us. More importantly, it feels good to know that the holiday celebration will be as cruelty-free as possible, not to mention better for the environment, healthier, and from what I understand, tastier. —Dan

We usually grow our own heritage, pastured turkeys, but took a break this year and did not grow any. So I purchased our turkey from East of Eden Farm in Huntersville, NC. These heritage Bronze Turkeys were grown on pasture and organic, no-GMO, no-soy feeds. Purchasing from this young family farm keeps the money in the community, allows them to continue to farm, is environmentally sound and more humane. I have been in NC factory farmed chicken and turkey houses. It is the most disgusting, inhumane sight I have ever seen. —Stacy

After educating myself about the treatment of factory-farmed animals a few years ago, I made a drastic change to my diet. The vast majority of my meals are vegetarian these days, though I occasionally make an exception for meat that is locally sourced and humanely raised. My family had a hard time accepting my new eating habits at first, but after listening to me talk about what I’d learned, they started to understand. They’re not willing to give up meat entirely, but they do try to buy from local farmers when they can. This year, my mother bought a turkey from a friend of hers, one of only 7 that they raised. To be honest, I would be quite content with the vegetable sides, but the turkey is really important to the rest of my family, and I love that they go to such lengths so that I can enjoy it too. —Nicole

I am a transplant from the UK and Thanksgiving is not one of our celebrations, and in all the 12 years I have been in the U.S. I have never had a true American Thanksgiving dinner – I have just been invited to my first this year and will be taking along a vegan ‘meat’loaf with mushroom gravy – recipe yet to be cobbled together. —Gillian

My family chooses to eat locally-grown and totally awesome farmers market fruits and veggies and gorge ourselves without taking the lives of any awesome creatures! How about that for values! —Lizzie

We make a slew of veggie dishes and stuffing and homemade rolls and maybe even some veggie tamales and spread out a picnic blanket and eat outside with all the other critters. —Stacey

Because Thanksgiving is about being thankful, I wanted to prepare a meal without serving an animal who suffered before ending up on our table. With all of the vegetables, bread, potatoes and desserts available, no one left hungry or wanting more. It is shameful to see how animals are treated in factory farms but it’s a reality that we all need to be aware of. Not only are the conditions for animals unfathomable, but these farms also destroy our environment and contribute to health problems like cancer, diabetes, and obesity. My family didn’t miss turkey on Thanksgiving this year, and I’m very thankful for that! —Gina

With our friends, we write a list of things for which we are most thankful. With our lists in our pockets, we go out with trash bags and pick up litter (and recycling) in our neighborhood and along the creek. Folks passing by ask what we are doing, and some even join in! After about an hour or two, we go back and get ready for our vegan feast. It’s always delicious (we like Quorn products for meat substitutes). This is our fourth annual event of this kind. —Jon

I discovered Frank Reese and Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch after reading about him on the Farm Forward website. This year, for the first time, I ordered and prepared a heritage turkey from Good Shepherd for my family. It was surprisingly different than the turkeys I’m used to, but definitely more like the turkeys I remember as a child. The meat was delicious and the cooking directions perfect. It was clearly our best Thanksgiving bird ever! The genetic changes in current turkeys are really noticeable: There was so much more muscle in the legs of the heritage turkey, and it made me realize that modern turkeys have much weaker bones and cartilage. The heritage bird was thinner and the meat much more balanced. You can really see how they’ve bred modern turkeys to have misshapen breasts. It makes me sad to realize how few people appreciate the purity of the heritage bird. Thank you for assisting Frank Reese in his efforts to preserve these animals for future generations. —Ann

When I was tasked this year with hosting Thanksgiving for my family and friends I decided to cook a meal that reflected my growing awareness of food ethics and my current values about food production. I eat meat and all of my guests except one were also omnivores, but I set a mostly vegetarian menu to reflect the fact that I think of meat as being just a part of a conscientious diet. Everything but the turkey was vegetarian or vegan. I got my turkey from a local poultry farm that raises free-range, hormone-free chickens and turkeys. It is a family run business that is located within 25 miles of my home. This choice reflected a couple of values I am developing about food. First and foremost, I tried to select a bird from the most humane farm I could find and from a place that I could actually read about and understand their practices. But equally as important to me was to pick a local business and one that would allow me to actually visit the farm where the animal was grown. To continue my local, best-practice theme I searched out a farmers market (not easy in the midwest in November, but possible!) and purchased as much of my produce as I could from the (mostly) organic farmers there. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how easy this was to do. The only fresh items I couldn’t find at the market were herbs and green beans. The best surprise were some cranberries from Michigan that I turned into a wonderful sauce (much better than canned). All in all, with only a little extra effort, I was able to cook a meal I was proud of because it reflected my belief that the best food is that which is produced mostly locally by small businesses who use environmentally responsible and humane practices. And the best part? This kind of food simply tastes better too! —Abby

Thanksgiving is held at my parents’ house, where it isn’t a meal if there isn’t meat. However, after reading Foer’s Eating Animals, I decided to stick my neck out and at least inform my mom about more humane, sustainable turkey options (I knew no turkey was not an option). I offered to pay for the turkey myself, or pay for the wine, to make up the difference in the cost of a typical grocery store turkey and one from Frank Reese’s farm. Guess what?! It worked! My mom is a bit nervous about this turkey being different than what she’s used to working with, but I am confident it will only be different in that it’s more delicious. —Elizabeth

I know that Tofurky gets a bad reputation, but I am serving one this year, for my first vegetarian Thanksgiving. I’ve had Tofurky before and I love it! I’m a traditionalist so I am not straying too far from the beaten path: green bean casserole, glazed sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce from scratch, and cornbread stuffing. But I’ll be using vegetable broth to make the stuffing and omitting the chopped hard-boiled egg. For dessert: homemade crepes with caramelized apples. Best of all, my significant other is omnivorous but supportive, so this will be his first vegetarian Thanksgiving meal too. I am hoping it will catch on with him after this year. We are really looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner this year! —Angela

I don’t typically eat meat. We have a CSA with a small farm in Wisconsin called Living the Dream Farm. We mostly get eggs, goat cheese and greens, but we also paid for a turkey back in April. Our farmer, Khaiti Kaleck, raises her turkeys with love all year, and also harvests them with love. She talks to them and holds them while they go. It’s still not a vegetarian choice, but as a Mother who wants to raise my meat-loving family to care about the planet and the welfare of its beings, it is a pretty great choice. —Tatiana

Farm Forward Board Member and 4th-generation Kansas farmer Frank Reese Jr. is on a mission to revolutionize the poultry industry by raising heritage turkeys and chickens in high welfare conditions. His latest achievement is a new, state-of-the-art barn at Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch. The barn is the first of its kind—a large-scale facility that produces exclusively heritage chickens and turkeys.

The 12,000-square-foot structure was built with a loan from Farm Forward, which was made possible by a generous grant from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). By doubling Good Shepherd’s production capacity, the barn allows Good Shepherd to fill orders for customers who would otherwise be forced to buy birds from factory farms. (This is the first project funded by Farm Forward’s Pay It Forward Loan Program. Stay tuned for an upcoming feature about this exciting new opportunity for high-welfare farmers!)

“Most poultry operations ask, at best, ‘How can I improve welfare while keeping my costs the same,’” explains Farm Forward CEO Aaron Gross. “Reese’s kind of farming starts with a level of animal welfare as a non-negotiable principle and asks, ‘How can we keep costs as low as possible while maintaining these high welfare standards?’ Farm Forward’s loan to Mr. Reese is helping to transform the industry by shifting market share from typical industrial farms to farms like Good Shepherd,” adds Gross.

The new barn embodies the three principles of Good Shepherd’s heritage farming philosophy: animal welfare, breed conservancy and biodiversity, and environmental stewardship.

Animal welfare

The barn was constructed with the comfort and health of its avian inhabitants as a top priority. Reese installed doors that open onto large ranges at regular intervals along one wall and provided larger walk-out doors at each end of the barn, allowing birds easy access to pasture year-round. A built-in roost spanning 200 feet gives the birds plenty of room to rest safely. A host of temperature controls automatically respond to conditions in the barn to ensure that it is never too hot, too cold, or too humid for the birds. In short, the new Good Shepherd barn exemplifies how modern agricultural technology can be employed to maximize the well-being of farmed animals.

Breed conservancy and biodiversity

As the poultry industry has moved away from heritage breeds in favor of hybrid birds to meet increasingly intensive production demands, conservation of heritage breeding lines has declined to the point that heritage poultry is in danger of disappearing completely. The preservation of diverse breeds is crucial to any future farm system for optimizing both animal health and animal welfare. In contrast to birds from hybrid breeding lines, the heritage breeds Reese raises, like Plymouth Rock chickens and Standard Bronze turkeys, are able to thrive on pasture, grow slowly, and mate naturally.

The new barn will help ensure the survival of heritage breeds by allowing Good Shepherd to function as a hatchery exclusively for heritage chicks and poults, saving a crucial and irreplaceable resource for promoting more humane and sustainable poultry farming. Currently, 99% of chicks sold to poultry farmers are hybrid birds from factory hatcheries, but farmers will soon be able to source heritage breeds from Good Shepherd.

Environmental stewardship

The barn is also designed to make maximum use of its surrounding space without depleting the land. Reese laid out the building so birds have access to three different pastures as they grow in size. Multiple pasture allows for easy movement of the birds and time for each pasture to re-charge between flocks. This method avoids the profound welfare problems associated with “tractor” systems that allow birds access to fresh pasture but continue to keep them confined in pens.

Reese and Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch have been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, ABC News, the Martha Stewart Show, and in the best-selling book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. The new barn at Good Shepherd advances Reese’s work in heritage poultry by helping make his ranch a model that other farmers can follow.

Farm Forward supports the development of agricultural practices that can help reduce the number of animals on factory farms and improve farmed animal welfare. We hope you’ll join us in working toward the highest welfare, most sustainable and just alternatives to factory farming.

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What the Hummer is to fuel efficiency, poultry is to animal welfare. No food in the nation produces more suffering than poultry. Factory farming had its beginnings in the poultry industry in the 1920s, and no other industry has been so altered by its methods and logic.

To make matters worse, birds raised for meat have absolutely no protection under the law. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act is the only piece of federal legislation that offers protection to farmed animals at slaughter, and chickens and turkeys are formally excluded from the law. As a result, while cows and pigs must be rendered unconscious before they are slaughtered, it’s legal—in fact it is the common practice—to paralyze birds and slaughter them while they are still conscious. This is true not only for factory farmed birds, but also for birds correctly labelled free range, organic, and even pasture raised.

It’s also perfectly legal to starve birds, cut off their sensitive beaks, and confine them for their entire lives in spaces so small they can never stretch their wings. And there are currently no laws in place to prevent corporations from genetically engineering birds any way they like—regardless of the cost to the animals’ wellbeing.

Today’s commercially available chickens, for example, are virtually all genetic hybrids.1 Most all of these birds grow three times as fast on a third of the feed when compared to heritage breeds. Imagine a child reaching adult size by age 7 while only eating lunch. The physiological effects of this rapid growth are devastating. The Defra-funded study2 of 51,000 chickens intensively bred specifically for their meat, found that at about 40 days old 27.6 percent exhibited “poor locomotion” with 3.3 percent of the chickens not being able to walk at all.

“Heritage” is the name give to the standard-bred chicken and turkey breeds that pre-date the rise of industrial agriculture. True heritage chickens will meet the American Poultry Association’s (APA) Standards of Perfection and have three main characteristics. Heritage chickens mate naturally; they live long, productive lives; and they grow at a normal rate.3 If a chicken product doesn’t come from a standard-bred chicken, odds are greater than 99 percent that the chicken grew at an accelerated growth rate that had catastrophic effects on the birds’ health. Even more disturbing is the genetic engineering of today’s turkeys, who can no longer fly, walk normally, or reproduce sexually.

The extreme modification of chickens’ genetics may be causing health problems not only in chickens, but in the people who eat them. Historically, chickens were relatively lean and contained more protein than fat, but a recent study4 suggest that they are now made up more of fat than protein. From 1870 to 2004 the fat content of commercially available chickens has increased 5-fold, while their protein content has shrunk by 25 percent.5

When it comes to poultry, anything goes.

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It’s tempting to think that a rapid shift away from factory farming isn’t possible. It’s easy to believe that individual consumers don’t have the power to force the industry to raise standards for farmed animals. But third-generation poultry farmer David Pitman—the head of one of the largest high welfare poultry operations in the country—knows differently: “Farmers produce and change their practices based on consumer demand. And this change only takes as long as the consumer wants it to.”

David centers his business around a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese living on his farms. David’s story models a way forward, outside of the factory farm system.

Based in central California, Pitman Farms is one of the few non-industrial poultry operations to withstand the rapid industrialization of animal agriculture. David’s grandfather, Don Pitman, started the farm in 1954, raising American Poultry Association Standard-Bred birds—genetically similar to the heritage turkeys David raises today. Back then birds didn’t need antibiotics to thrive. But in the 70s and 80s, when concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) took over and consumers began to rely on cheaper meat, the Pitman family decided to adapt to this new market, fearing that they would otherwise be run out of business like millions of other farmers.

David remembers that time: “First there was the farm to think about—what was the best for us as a family and what was the most compassionate on the farm; and then there was the consumer and what they wanted to buy and eat.” For David’s family, meeting consumer demand required sacrificing hundreds of years of genetic integrity and animal welfare to raise industrial turkeys, whose bodies yielded more meat at a lower cost per pound.

But in the early 2000s, while attending a multi-stakeholder meeting with poultry farmers, customers, retailers, and animal advocates, it became clear to David that there was indeed a growing market for the high welfare animals that Pitman Farms had once raised.

Shortly after the meeting, David reinvented his business and once again began raising his animals to meet the highest welfare standards available. The family-owned Pitman Farms could make big changes in response to consumer demand more quickly than could larger, corporate-owned, less-agile producers. As David says, “We’re ready to make those changes the moment our customers show they’re willing to join us by paying for healthier, happier, and hardier birds.” Along with these big changes came a new label, “Mary’s,” after David’s mother. As David recalls, “Mom would not stand behind or support the family business until we kicked up our welfare and started doing what was best for the birds and for the health of those who bought them.”

Collaborating with Global Animal Partnership

As Pitman Farms raised its animal welfare standards, it needed a way to guarantee its conscientious practices to its customers. Enter Global Animal Partnership (GAP), whose 5-Step Animal Welfare Ratings Standards have become the largest welfare certification program in America. “Step 1” GAP certification indicates better welfare than the average factory farm, but still relatively low welfare. Products rated at “Step 5” represent the gold standard of welfare. By overhauling his operations, Pitman Farms was able to meet some of GAP’s highest standards, and now David is the first producer of any farmed animal to get a Step 5 certification! According to GAP’s Executive Director Miyun Park, “David Pitman is leading the way in promoting and putting into practice higher welfare farming. His heartfelt commitment to continuous improvement in agriculture is truly inspiring.”

What has been good for the animals also has been good for Pitman Farms’ bottom line: GAP certification increased sales of David’s birds more than 100 percent during the first 60 days. Farm Forward Founder and CEO Aaron Gross explains:

This is why Farm Forward has been an advocate of GAP and why we are proud to share several board members with them. Multi-tier animal welfare rating schemes like GAP’s are absolutely essential to progress in animal welfare precisely because they provide an easy path for producers to communicate to consumers about what the level of welfare they have achieved, rather than sloppily labeling animal products either as humane or inhumane.”

David’s concern for animal welfare also extends beyond his own farms; he is at the forefront of a growing group of progressive farmers who understand that animal health and welfare have as much to do with strong genetics as with farming practices. The philosophy behind today’s hybrid poultry maximizes genetic characteristics that improve profitability, like feed conversion (the rate at which livestock turn feed into flesh), but ignores the birds’ wellbeing. This approach to breeding has created birds whose genetics make them suffer more bone breaks1, have higher incidence of sickness2, and reproductive disease3—in sum, it has led to deformed, unhealthy birds. David himself came face to face with this problem a few years ago:

In 2004, we were raising alternative, modified-industrial breeds of chickens. One day I was showing my wife around one of the chicken houses. As I proudly talked on and on about how our farm was on the cutting edge of poultry, and how these birds were antibiotic-free, free-range, and organic, etc., she stood, with a tear in her eye, looking at one small chicken. Clearly unable to walk normally, the chick just hobbled awkwardly and then crashed to the ground, over and over. When she asked me why the chicken couldn’t stand despite all the ‘cutting edge’ advantages I mentioned, I explained that if people wanted cheap, boneless breast meat, that meant more breast and a lot less bone for the animal; if you have one thing you have to sacrifice another. It hit me then that we weren’t quite doing enough. We needed to concentrate welfare on better genes.”

Genetics Matter

Today Pitman Farms is the second-largest producer of heritage, Standard-Bred poultry in the country. David raises heritage turkeys, along with several other alternative breeds, and raises chickens whose genetic makeup is between typical industrial birds and the gold standard of heritage. He still raises some higher welfare industrial breeds—at least for now.

When asked about the future of his farms and heritage birds, he said: “I think more so than any time before, there is an increasing demand for alternatives to hybrid [industrial] birds, toward truly slow-growing heritage birds. Historically, as people have become more aware of animal welfare issues, and of the relationship between these issues and their health as a consumers, they sought change: first they wanted free range, then they wanted organic. Now, as customers recognize that there is more to welfare than how the birds are raised, they are going to demand birds like Heritage. We’ll be ready to meet that need.”

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This summer, the world’s first restaurant serving only heritage poultry opened in Deposit, New York, a popular weekend destination among New Yorkers. It sells heritage meats produced by Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch and is already generating regional buzz. Butterfields’ opening is a milestone for proponents of humane, sustainable animal agriculture—and it all started with a simple phone call.

“I wanted to open a restaurant with healthy, humane menu options,” said Butterfield’s owner George Merich, “but I didn’t know where to start. I browsed the Internet and found a place called Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch. Its owner, Farm Forward board member Frank Reese, picked up when I called.” Merich grew up on a farm and is a self-described “animal-loving meat-eater;” but before talking with Reese he was only somewhat aware of the horrors of factory farming. “I learned so much from that first phone call,” Merich remembers, “especially about turkeys.”

Reese, a 46-year veteran farmer, has raised turkeys since he was a boy and is a leading expert on the history of American poultry. Reese explained what sets his Heritage Turkeys apart from the “broad-breasted White,” the industry’s bird of choice for mass production. Industrial turkeys are bred to grow at twice the rate of the turkeys of a generation ago.1 They are incapable of flying or mating naturally (the industry relies on artificial insemination) and are given antibiotics routinely. As a result the turkey products available in virtually all grocery stores and restaurants (including free-range and organic brands) are often from sick, injured, and even dying birds who suffered throughout their lives.

In contrast, Good Shepherd turkeys—bred continuously from flocks dating back to at least 1917— grow at a natural and healthy rate, reproduce on their own, enjoy a humane and spacious environment, and can even fly. They are called Heritage Turkeys because genetically they are the same hardy, healthy turkeys our grandparents and great-grandparents ate. The American Poultry Association designates them “Standard-Bred,” which means they meet the Standards of Perfection established in the late 1800s.2 These birds are never given antibiotics or other antimicrobials, and are meticulously cared for by Frank Reese and his network of compassionate farmers.

The results of such a system are extraordinary: leaner, more protein-rich poultry that has been featured on the Martha Stewart Show, earned praise from celebrity chefs like Mario Batali, and won top honors in several taste contests including one organized by the New York Times.

Once Merich understood what made Good Shepherd’s Heritage Poultry so different, he flew out to Kansas to visit Reese and see his operation. He helped Reese take his turkeys to pasture in the morning and herd them back in at night. The experience left a profound impression. As Merich put it, “When you actually hold a turkey and look into its eyes, it’s a whole new game.”

Now Merich is bringing the care, expertise, and unrivaled animal husbandry he experienced in Kansas to Deposit, New York.

Merich represents a new breed of entrepreneurship—one that insists both businesses and consumers alike should benefit from healthier, hardier, and more ethically raised birds. Heritage farm animals combine good business with highest welfare in the same success story. “What I love about working with farmers like Frank is not only that they are good people, but that they have a time-tested and humane business model that really works. I’m not just supporting one good farmer but preserving the legacy of the best of American farming.” True, entrepreneurs like Merich are preserving a part of American history, but their eyes are more on the future than the past: a future without factory farms.

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The recall of more than half a billion potentially deadly eggs in the Fall of 2010—enough eggs to make an omelet for every person in America—focused public attention on several unsafe and cruel practices within the egg industry. This recall, in addition to news of a historic agreement between the egg industry and welfare groups, means that legislators will be giving attention to the conditions of laying hens. With hen housing debates in full swing and the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of birds at stake, Farm Forward wants you to have the facts about how America’s egg supply is produced.

Hen Housing Today

Here’s a breakdown of all modern forms of housing for laying hens:

• Conventional battery cages: These cages are used to produce 95%1 of all eggs in America. Each hen is given roughly 67 sq. inches of cage space, less room than a single sheet of paper.2 The limited space and lack of enrichment in these cages does not allow for “species-specific” behaviors like nesting, which are crucial to basic welfare.3

Three additional categories of housing are employed on egg farms that provide the remaining 5% of our egg supply:

• Enriched cages: Though the standards are loosely defined, enriched cages are intended to provide features like perches, nest boxes, litter, scratching areas, and additional space.4
• Cage-free: Animals are kept in a barn or aviary setting with the birds generally housed on the floor.
• Free-range: These operations are similar to cage-free operations but claim to provide “access to the outdoors.” However, since “free-range” is not a term that is meaningfully regulated, consumers have virtually no way of knowing if the hens that laid their “free range” eggs are any better off than birds in cage-free systems.

The improvement of welfare in any of these three alternative factory farming systems is limited. As Farm Forward board member Jonathan Safran Foer explains in Eating Animals, “Cage-free . . . means no more or less than what it says—they are literally not in cages. [And] one can assume that most ‘free-range’ [and] ‘cage-free’ laying hens are debeaked, drugged, force molted, and cruelly slaughtered once ‘spent.’”5

The Debate: Enriched Cages Versus Cage-Free

There are two possible ways the industry is likely to proceed as it phases out its use of battery cages: battery cages will either be replaced with enriched cages or with cage-free operations. Segments of the poultry industry are presently favoring enhanced cages over cage-free systems.

Humane farming advocates—such as HSUS, The RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming and others—have argued that cage-free systems of one kind or another provide better welfare than enhanced cages. Farm Forward stands with these organizations, along with Nicholas Kristof, Wal-Mart, Costco and countless others urging industry to adopt cage-free production methods as part of a multifaceted approach to improving welfare standards for the millions of laying hens raised in the United States.

When combined with good management, enhanced cages and cage-free housing operations provide significant welfare advantages over battery cages, but no housing system can sufficiently improve the welfare of the Frankenstein breeds of laying hens currently used in the industry. The genetics and physiology of modern laying hens has been altered to maximize production at the expense of the animals’ wellbeing. Virtually all hens bred to lay eggs suffer from skeletal weakness related to osteoporosis.6 As a result, the risk of bone-fractures during laying is very high, especially in cage-free systems.7 Moreover, as long as poultry producers continue to use hens bred with disregard for basic welfare, the morbidity and mortality rates of laying hens in cage-free operations can be higher than in well-run systems that employ enhanced cages.8

In other words, cage-free systems may not be any more humane than enriched cage systems unless the genetics of the hens is taken into consideration. While it’s hard to imagine that any animal would be healthier if never allowed outside a cage, one can imagine disabilities that might make this so. Because of the profound genetic problems introduced in laying hens as they were bred for efficiency at the expense of welfare, virtually all laying hens today are disabled.

Clearly, talking about the cage or barn in which we raise laying hens is only half the picture of welfare. The other half is the genetic health of the animals. Farm Forward agrees with HSUS: “hens should be biologically sound and healthy, and able to move freely and without risk of injury, as they were before commercial breeding practices pushed them toward their biological limit. The solution to this problem should be pursued by science and industry in conjunction with the move toward cage-free systems.”9

Cage-free systems improve welfare for today’s breeds of hens but the industry is correct to note that so do enhanced cages. Farm Forward still favors a move towards cage-free operations over enhanced cages. We do so because as the poultry industry is pushed to return to more traditional genetics, the welfare possible in cage-free systems will far exceed the modest improvements in welfare possible in enhanced cages.

With your help, Farm Forward will continue to advocate for a more humane poultry industry that includes meaningful steps toward the reintroduction of high-welfare heritage genetics that allow birds to run, jump, and fly as they were meant to do. We hope you will join us.

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