Over 6 billion broiler chickens are slaughtered for meat in the EU-27 each year, producing around 9.4 million tonnes of chicken meat, with an average per capita consumption of 17.4 kg/year (Avec, 2011). The top six chicken meat producing countries of the EU-27 are shown in Figure 1, and account for 67.6% of the total EU production. The UK is the largest producer, with Poland, France, Germany and Spain producing similar amounts.

Animal welfare is an increasingly important factor in the purchasing decisions of consumers (Napolitano et al., 2010), sustained despite the prevailing recession (IGD, 2011). Recent surveys indicate almost half of UK consumers surveyed rated animal welfare as either ‘very important’ or ‘extremely important’ (IGD, 2011), whilst 76% (Defra, 2011) and 85% (Conan et al., 2010) rated welfare as ‘an important’ issue. In fact farm animal welfare was rated the single most important sustainability related food issue for British consumers (IGD, 2011; Defra, 2011), above health or safety concerns. Over 70% of US citizens surveyed also reported ‘concern’ for farm animal welfare (Norwood and Lusk, 2011). Broilers were identified amongst the three animal systems most in need of animal welfare improvements by EU citizens (European Commission, 2005).

The Food Business team has recently produced comprehensive tables comparing various welfare schemes with Compassion’s criteria for higher animal welfare.

Compassion analysed 34 initiatives, across 10 countries and 4 species (broiler chickens, laying hens, sows and meat pigs and dairy cows and calves) to understand which ones meet Compassion’s criteria for higher animal welfare.

Click here to read the comparison table for broiler chickens.

A note from Compassion on multi-tier colony cages and net flooring systems outlining the disadvantages for broiler welfare.