Animal Welfare Issues in the Poultry Industry

Ian J.H. Duncan
Chair in Animal Welfare
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada

biography

Of all classes of livestock, poultry are kept under the most intensive and artificial conditions. This has lead to a number of serious animal welfare problems. These problems deserve discussion in their own right. However, they may also provide a warning to other sectors of animal agriculture, since what happens in the poultry industry today is often adopted by other animal industries tomorrow. The major animal welfare issues facing the poultry industry are: 1. Disposal of spent laying hens The process of removing spent hens from their cages at the end of a laying year, crating them, transporting them to slaughter, and humanely killing them results in a great deal of injury to the birds with associated pain and suffering. There are three contributing factors, namely (a) traditional battery cages are poorly designed for the removal of birds, (b) spent laying hens have very fragile skeletons, and (c) spent laying hens have very little or no commercial value. This is proving to be an intractable problem. Some possible solutions will be discussed. 2. Water-bath stunning Almost all poultry slaughtered in North America are stunned using water-bath stunning. This process is not very efficient and not very humane. There is an alternative, gas stunning or modified atmosphere stunning, which is completely humane. This will be discussed. 3. Catching and transportation Catching and transporting animals is inherently a very stressful procedure. In addition to this stress, birds in the poultry industry are often injured and exposed to extremes of climate. We need to move to an integrated system involving automated catching, well-designed trucks with good climate control and in-crate gas stunning. 4. Elective surgeries By elective surgeries I mean such things as beak trimming, de-toeing, dubbing, de-snooding, etc. Although they are carried out for apparently good reasons (and some of those may be welfare reasons) nevertheless they all involve pain, acute and/or chronic pain. There also may be other costs to the bird. There may be alternatives to these surgeries or there may be improved ways of carrying them out. These will be discussed. 5. Fast growth problems Metabolic diseases associated with fast growth such as skeletal problems and ascites are increasing in the poultry industry. These are welfare problems as well as production problems because the birds are suffering. It is probably a mistake to think that there is an environmental or nutritional solution. These problems indicate that we are reaching the biological limit of growth and that we cannot go on selecting for increased growth rate. 6. Food restriction of broiler breeders In order to be reproductively fit in adult life, broiler breeders must be kept very severely feed-restricted; their short-term welfare of being non-hungry conflicts with their long-term welfare of being non-obese. Although there may be some steps that can be taken immediately to alleviate this problem, in the long-term, parent stock with smaller appetites in the answer. The solution, therefore, is in the hands of the Primary Breeders. 7. Hyper-aggressive broiler breeder males This is a problem that has appeared in the last eight years. Most broiler breeder males are very aggressive towards females, injuring and even killing them. This is not due to feed-restriction. Males are deficient in courtship behaviour. The long-term solution is again a genetic one; the Primary Breeders will have to select male lines that show normal courtship behaviour. 8. Forced moulting The methods being used in the U.S. to force-moult laying hens at the end of a laying year are not humane. Hens are currently put on to short day-length, which slowly starts to put the birds out of lay and which is not a problem. However, the hens are simultaneously deprived of food for 12-15 days and this is a welfare problem. Alternative, more humane methods will have to be found. 9. Battery cages The main welfare problems with battery cages are that they frustrate nesting behaviour, do not allow normal posture for resting and crowd birds too closely together. Cages do have some welfare advantages such as hygiene and small group size. Rather than banning cages outright, a solution might be to modify them to solve their short-comings while retaining their advantages. Ian J.H. Duncan was born and educated in Edinburgh, Scotland. He took his PhD at the Poultry Research Centre, Edinburgh on a topic of frustration in the fowl. He then worked at the Poultry Research Centre (now called the Roslin Institute - famous for "Dolly") for over 20 years on poultry behaviour and welfare. For 10 years he advised the commission of the European Communities on animal welfare matters. In 1989, Ian emigrated to Canada and took up a position in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at the University of Guelph. He is currently Professor of Applied Ethology in that Department and holds the University Chair in Animal Welfare. He has published widely on all aspects of animal welfare. His current research interest is in developing methods of asking animals what they feel about the conditions under which they are kept and the procedures to which they are subjected.