Demands of supermarkets force farms to cram more chickens into battery sheds

Increasing numbers of birds are being packed into mass meat production facilities because high street retailers want smaller, younger chickens to sell to customers at lower prices. As many as 19 chickens or more are being squeezed into every square metre of floor space, which some experts say causes pain and stress.

Farmers and supermarkets, however, deny that their increasingly intensive production methods are cruel. They point out that animal welfare standards conform to the food industry's assurance scheme and are much better than they used to be.

But, according to Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University and a former government adviser, chickens have the most miserable lives on farms. "Probably no animal farmed intensively has a shorter, more captive or controlled life than the broiler chicken," he said. "A luxury item six decades ago has become routine, tasteless, so-called meat today. And now we witness this new shift to even shorter lives, driven by market changes."

Lang urged people to question why mass-produced chicken has become so tasteless. "If you want to eat chicken, pay more," he suggested. "Eat it more infrequently to compensate for buying better quality."

Controversy has been sparked by a bid from a big farm in Fife to boost its production capacity by almost 50% from 340,000 to 500,000 chickens. In an application to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Peacehill Farm on the Firth of Tay says this is because "the supermarkets are requesting lighter birds".

A farm spokesperson said: "The reason for increasing bird places is that due to customer requirements the birds will have a shorter productive life and will be slaughtered at a lighter weight."

The application says this will lead to more chickens in the same space, but promises that the stocking density will not exceed 38 kilogrammes per square metre. If the chickens weigh an average of 2kg each, that is 19 in every square metre.

According to Libby Anderson, policy director at OneKind, an Edinburgh-based animal rights group, this will inevitably cause the birds suffering. The European Union's scientific committee on animal welfare concluded that at more than 30kg per square metre there is a "steep rise in the frequency of serious problems".

Anderson added: "The demand for chicken seems to be limitless and we are concerned to see the drive towards greater intensification of this sort. The more densely they are stocked, the greater the risk of lameness and painful leg problems, hock and foot burns, and stress."

She urged people who buy chicken sandwiches from supermarkets to be aware that the meat comes from birds unable to move around freely. "Current guidance is for stocking densities to be lowered, not raised, when birds are being reared to lower slaughter weights, so we can't see a justification for increasing it here almost to the very upper limit."

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Demands of supermarkets force farms to cram more chickens into battery sheds