| Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Today’s story by Axelle Playoust-Braure and Paul Tullis might leave you reconsidering your dinner plans. It’s about how genetic selection has made “probably the biggest animal welfare problem we have in all animal husbandry.” You can find the whole story online here. And you can listen to it here. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. The Ross 308 is the top-selling chicken breed worldwide, common to the point of ubiquity. The 308 and its close relatives account for about two-fifths of the 22.7 billion chickens being raised for meat on the planet on any given day. Most spend their brief lives indoors in cramped conditions suffering injury and illness, unable to engage in natural behaviors. Behind the 308 lie a host of animal welfare concerns that have largely been ignored. Over the decades, its progenitors have been selectively bred to dramatically reduce costs for producers. These days, they reach slaughter weight three times faster than chickens in the 1950s. But according to numerous peer-reviewed studies and European government reports, that breeding has led to an array of health issues: Leg and skeletal defects appeared first, causing painful lameness and the premature death of bone cells. These were followed by cardiovascular problems that made mortality rates spike. More recently, researchers have encountered muscle abnormalities with oddball names like woody breast syndrome (pale areas where the flesh has hardened) and spaghetti meat (fibers separating into stringlike bundles). The root of those problems lies in the birds’ genetic makeup. The 308’s breeder, Alabama-based Aviagen Group Ltd., and top rival Oklahoma-based Cobb-Vantress, maker of the similar Cobb500—which faces similar problems—together control 95% of commercial breeding stock. These companies don’t sell the chickens that end up in your nuggets, buffalo wings or cacciatore. They raise the forebears of their breeds for three generations and sell the parents of the animals raised for slaughter to chicken producers. “Poultry breeding is like a pyramid, and we are at the very top,” says Magnus Swalander, global vice president of products at Aviagen. Aviagen and Cobb raise a small number of purebred chickens, then cross and recross their bloodlines for three generations. Among the traits the producers want is a low feed-conversion ratio—a measure of how efficiently the animal turns feed into body mass. Food accounts for up to 70% of chicken production costs, so the less consumed, the better. The so-called breeder birds have far longer lives than the 308 (the name effectively denotes a “model” of chicken, much like the Ford F150 or the BMW 535), which is killed, butchered and shrink-wrapped at about five weeks. These purebred animals are prone to suffering from health issues similar to those afflicting their offspring, according to the European Food Safety Authority and welfare advocates, but they’re typically kept alive to about 15 months, producing the chicks that will grow up to be the forebears of Ross 308s. And in the US at least, choosing organic chicken doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be getting meat from animals that lead a better life; almost all USDA Organic birds are the 308 or similar fast-growth varieties. What breeder birds must endure is “probably the biggest animal welfare problem we have in all animal husbandry,” says Per Jensen, professor of animal behavior at Sweden’s Linköping University. The double helix of DNA is unpredictable, and breeding for desirable traits such as fast growth or ample breast meat often results in others that are less desirable—much as breeding golden retrievers for docility and silky coats frequently results in congenital hip dysplasia. Selection for traits that boost income for Aviagen, Cobb and the downstream production system leads to the genetic consequences such as bone deformities and impaired mobility that have accumulated over decades of selective breeding, culminating in breeds such as the Ross 308.  Daisy, an 8-year-old Ross 308 broiler living out her life at GroinGroin, an animal sanctuary. Photographer: Edouard Jacquinett for Bloomberg Businessweek To ensure they can keep reproducing, these breeder birds are often forced to endure chronic hunger, which causes stress and hyperactivity. They sometimes peck excessively at the ground, hoping for a tiny morsel, or at fellow birds, harming themselves and others. And to fill their empty bellies, they drink excessive amounts of water, which can cause excessive urine to collect on the floor, often leading to foot and skin problems. A common response: restrict access to water, according to a European Union document. Attempts to reduce the incidence of genetically induced health problems often backfire with slower growth rates, but Aviagen says it has a program of “multitrait genetic improvement” that can ensure both welfare and growth. “We actually select the birds to deliver on health, welfare and sustainability, which are really, really important areas for us,” Swalander says. In 2023 the European Union’s Food Safety Authority advised the industry to roll back to a time when the birds’ genetic makeup meant they took longer to reach slaughter weight, saying that the more rapidly a chicken grows, the worse its welfare. “The use of slower-growing hybrids is recommended,” the regulators wrote, “with particular attention to breeds with lower mortality, reduced leg weakness and reduced susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases.” A coalition of animal welfare advocates wants the industry to follow that advice, creating the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) in the US and the sister European Chicken Commitment (ECC). These ask restaurant and supermarket chains to avoid fast-growing breeds and have offered an alternative list of slower-growing birds they say can be produced more humanely. With polls showing 84% of Europeans want better welfare protections for farmed animals, more than 600 companies, including Nestlé, Subway, Burger King and Chipotle, have said they’ll implement the BCC by the end of next year. The process won’t be without hurdles: Last November, KFC Corp. announced it wouldn’t meet its 2026 deadline for adopting the pledge in the UK, citing inadequate supply of slower-growth breeds. Agricultural industry lobbyists in the EU and the US are pushing back against the BCC and ECC. The crux of their argument is that many problems with the birds’ quality of life are a result of the way farmers raise them and that breeders are doing their best to tackle genetics-related health and welfare issues. But scientists have been saying for decades that the real breakthrough in welfare for broilers (all chickens raised for meat are “broilers,” regardless of how they end up getting cooked) would come from switching to slower-growing breeds. And even some with close ties to the industry agree. “Broilers’ existence is painful,” Michèle Tixier-Boichard, president of the World’s Poultry Science Association, an industry group that includes Aviagen as a leading sponsor, wrote in 2020. “And one may question whether such pain is justified by the human need for protein consumption.” Keep reading: How Generations of Selective Breeding Created Miserable Chickens |
