INVESTIGATION: Chickens Suffer on Spanish Factory Farm
Animal Equality, along with Spanish online newspaper Público, has released an investigation into a factory farm in Spain that documents the cruelty of the environment and rapid growth that chickens suffer.
THE DETAILS: Our team in Spain visited the same farm during different life stages of the farm’s chickens, accompanied on the last day by Ana Pardo de Vera, Chief Editor at Público. During their final visit, the chickens were in the last days of growth before being sent to the slaughterhouse and we were able to record the effects of intensive industrial farming:
Many of these animals could not stand because of the enormous size they have reached in only 30 days. Those that collapse cannot reach the feeders and end up dying of starvation.
Most of the chickens had burnt stomachs because of the ammonia that comes out of the ground where their own feces accumulate and is never cleaned up.
The animals live crowded together with almost no room to move around, and the air is unbreathable because of the high concentration of ammonia.
Deplorable hygienic conditions have the chickens living alongside dead ones, with drinking troughs that were completely mouldy.
UNNATURAL RAPID GROWTH: Our Investigators filmed the chickens approximately 10 days before they would be sent to a slaughterhouse, a fate that normally happens at around 42 days of age when the birds have not yet reached sexual maturity. Chickens raised for meat have been genetically selected to grow as fast as possible, and many of the diseases they suffer from are the result of this selection. Today, the growth rate of a chicken for meat production is 4 times higher than it was 70 years ago. If a human baby were to grow at the same rate; at two months old it would weigh about 661 pounds.
PANDEMIC RISK: Aside from the immense cruelty factory farms inflict on animals, these industrial farms also present the immediate threat of pandemic disease spread. Experts from the United Nations and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) point to animals and food of animal origin as the cause of novel diseases such as COVID-19. Their research concludes that industrial farming has caused most of the new infectious diseases in humans in the last decade and that there is a risk that animal farming could be the source of new pandemics, similar to what has already happened with live animal markets. Also, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.
In addition, it’s within the chicken industry that animal viruses have been found to mutate most often into a new and dangerous disease that could infect humans. It’s these new viruses, like COVID-19, that are the most deadly as their aren’t yet vaccines or immunity. For example, of the 16 strains of new influenza viruses currently identified by epidemiologists as "of particular concern," 11 originate from the avian influenza virus (including H5N1).
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE: Chickens raised for meat production are routinely given antibiotics as a preventative measure to stop them from getting sick. This is a widespread practice in industrial farming, but in Spain it is even more pronounced, with Spanish farms consuming five times more antibiotics than French farms and twice as much as Portuguese farms. Every year, 700 000 people in the world die from antibiotic-resistant infections, a figure that could rise to 10 million by 2050 if no action is taken to eliminate the use of preventative antibiotics, according to the World Health Organisation.
41 MILLION CHICKENS DIE BEFORE REACHING SLAUGHTER: In Spain, 1.9 million chickens are slaughtered every day, adding up to 695 million a year. According to data from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, more than 5% (41 million) died on farms in 2018 due to the terrible living conditions they endure, or roughly 112,000 a day.
WHAT COMES NEXT: Animal Equality in Europe is part of the European Chicken Commitment, an agreement to improve the living conditions of chickens. Together, we are trying to get companies to meet basic animal welfare criteria such as limiting overcrowding, meeting minimum light standards, adopting slower-growing breeds or having birds stunned with gas instead of being immersed in electrified water, as is currently the case. Our work extends from there to the rest of the world, with our teams in the US, India and Mexico and Brazil also efforting every day to improve the lives of chickens and all farmed animals currently living in cruel and abusive conditions. You can help by sharing out these important investigations with your friends and family, and choosing plant-based over animal products. Together, we will create a world where all animals are protected and respected.
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Transcript (English — en)
[Music]
So we're going to a chicken farm
that we visited about 20 days ago.
We want you to see how the
meat industry turns animals into
products basically subjected to
profitability. So what we're going to see
is how they've been transformed into something
completely unnatural. There's
no animal welfare to speak of, and we've been
concerned about the conditions
the animals are in. We want to bring
to light something the industry tries to
hide, something consumers are
completely unaware of. We believe it's necessary for
someone to shine a light
on a situation completely
unknown to society and
consumers, who sometimes don't know
where that cheap meat comes from.
People who consume
that meat probably can't imagine
the horror and suffering
behind it. It's
impossible, I imagine, to imagine
that. Well, now we'll see it. Now we'll see it. [
Music]
Inside these buildings that you
can usually see when you drive past them,
millions of
animals are suffering.
So we want to go inside to
really show what the industry doesn't want us to
see. This is the reality. This
has been the view. Now, dreams that They
really allow this kind of
suffering if it's wrong, this human hunting,
and what happens inside the farms, and what we're going to
see now, is
perfectly legal, completely
permitted, and these are standard
industry practices. This is the reality that
millions of animals live in in our country. This is
the reality we're going to show.
[Music]
Careful,
hello, as soon as we
arrived, these animals
are dying due to the conditions
in which they are raised. This
unbearable air is unbearable,
unbreathable. It's what
the animals live in permanently.
So, as you can see, well,
many of them have irritations,
dermatitis, or burns, direct
burns from the ammonia they breathe
here. The air is unbearable, so
many of the animals die. If they ca
n't move, almost the raiders
die because the rapid growth they've been
selected for means that
many times they can't even move.
That is, it causes them pain.
The plants don't support their
body weight, and they can't reach the water. They keep
raising the claw where the water is, and
many of them can't reach it. So the
weakest ones die on the mission. And it
says, look. This one has its feet
buried in the ground. It's from the
immense weight of the chickens, which are lying
on top of nearly 700 million other
chickens slaughtered in
our country. 41 million of them
will die right here on the farms.
This is horrifying.
Also,
how old is this one? Well,
when we first came to
this farm, they were chicks barely a
week old, and now, twenty days later, they
must be around 30
days old. Between 30 and 45 days, they are
sent to the slaughterhouse, and that's when
the animals can't take it anymore. There are no
veterinarians or
any kind of care here, and of course, this
animal will suffer here until it
dies. So, let's try to get it into a
more
correct position, at least. Its whole chest is burned, and
this is precisely what happens when you let it turn over.
Don't worry about turning it over, though.
As you can see, its legs are completely
disproportionate to its body, and the
rapid growth means its skeleton can't
even support its weight.
So when they fall... Because
they lose their balance, they can't even get
up.
Well, this animal probably won't even make it
to the slaughterhouse, which
is the most terrible thing.
And like everything else, it's because it's not just this one; we lifted him up,
and if we hadn't been
here today, nobody
would have given him the attention he needed.
And besides, this is a perverse system of
animal husbandry, and yet
another victim of this system.
And with the weight of the land, and
well, all this is a mixture of straw and
feces
because all he does is exercise,
which mixes with the bedding, and in the end,
this makes them breathe unhealthy air.
Here he's stayed. We came to
monitor his well-being, but nobody has come to
attend to him. He'll never have received
veterinary care, like none of the
other animals that will go to the slaughterhouse without
ever having seen a veterinarian, even though they
have burns. Well,
here we'll be hospitalized and
literally dying. They die,
and this agony is over.
And besides, look, did you see him? He's
completely useless, so he didn't
die today. He'll have died. That's it, without any
kind of care
beyond the conditions in which
these chickens live, which is absolutely
inhumane and cruel. I ca
n't think of any other
adjectives to describe it beyond that. That's what
people are feeding on, and let me
tell you something: the people who make a business out of
this
absolutely deplorable overproduction,
those people don't eat this meat.
[Music]
Well, let's let them rest
from the few hours of darkness they're
allowed, and it pains me to say it,
but we're leaving, but the
animals...
[Music]