The United Kingdom is among the major European countries that raise chickens for slaughter: 2020 million tons of meat were produced in 1,7 alone
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
The United Kingdom is among the major European countries that raise chickens for slaughter: 2020 million tons of meat were produced in 1,7 alone
In Britain the chicken industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. And over a quarter of chickens destined for human consumption come from just three counties: Hereford, Shropshire and Powys. Last year in the UK they were well produced 1,7 million tons of chicken meat, with a 28% increase in production compared to the previous decade.
As supply increases, the cost of chickens in this country has dropped by nearly a quarter since 2014. Paradoxically, a chicken is cheaper in UK supermarkets than a pint of beer. The average price of a pint in the UK is £ 3,47, while the average cost of a whole chicken weighing as little as 1,35kg in four major supermarkets is £ 3,15.
And, although the British government recently launched an Action Plan for Animal Welfare, this country continues to exploit chickens and other farmed animals, forced to survive in cages and confined spaces.
Read also: The mega intensive breeding of chickens in the Marche will not take place, the Region is blocking it
The (terrible) conditions of factory farms in Great Britain
As discovered in a four-year study by Cardiff University researcher Alison Caffyn, around 25% of the chickens slaughtered annually in Great Britain come from factory farms in Herefordshire and Shropshire counties. In most of these animals live herded and raised in inhumane conditions.
I was amazed by the sheer size of a farm building that stretched out in front of me and the presence of 45.000 chickens crammed into space. - Caffyn explains - They pecked in plastic feeders or occasionally on hay bales. This is how 95% of the UK's XNUMX billion chickens are raised each year - chicken is the most popular meat in the country and these huge sheds are why it's so cheap. The factories where much of the UK's meat is produced are relatively hidden. Not only because most people don't want to think about how animals are raised, but it's in the interest of the intensive livestock industry to keep a low profile. Many meat eaters prefer to avoid watching documentaries and reading news about the horrors of factory farming. Out of sight out of mind. The meat industry knows this too and strives to keep the reality of the conditions of farmed animals separate from the product people buy in supermarkets.
And in recent years, the situation of intensive farming has only worsened.
Over the past four years, I have been studying how intensive poultry units have been allowed to multiply in parts of the UK. " - says Dr. Caffyn - I found that the poultry industry took advantage of weak regulatory and planning regimes to expand what is a very profitable business. When I started drawing the planning question pattern in Herefordshire and Shropshire, looking at the records for each county, it was clear that the industry had been expanding steadily in the 90s and 2000s, with more and more farms investing in poultry. . An average house contained 1900 chickens in 25.000 and then contained 40.000 in 2000. But the new rules authorize factories to house between 50.000 and 55.000 chickens at a time. I found there was a sudden surge in demand in the early 2010s, partly because supermarkets wanted to source more chicken from the UK. Between 2013 and 2012, for example, the huge Hereford chicken processing plants, managed by the multinational Cargill, entered into a new contract with Tesco to supply one million more chickens per week. This required an additional 90 sheds in which to raise chickens.
In addition, the density of poultry farming in County Powys has reached an unprecedented level in Europe, according to the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales. Here the number of chickens raised has almost doubled over two decades.
It is now well known that intensive farms are real concentration camps for animals (as revealed by various surveys) as well as representing a danger to public health. When will this sad chapter finally end?
Fonte: The Conversation/Gov.Uk/CPRW
Read also:
- Horror in the Hague chicken farms: animals herded and stuffed with antibiotics to grow fast
- Bird flu: in France 45 departments are declared "high risk"
- Hundreds of thousands of chickens will be culled in the UK following the closure of slaughterhouses for Covid-19
