Why “Better Chicken” Means More Chickens, Not Justice
Every year, over 70 billion chickens are slaughtered worldwide. More than all pigs, cows, and sheep combined. Seventy. Billion. Sentient beings bred into existence only to be processed into parts. Their bodies have been engineered for one purpose: to become food as fast and cheaply as possible.
And still, that isn’t enough.
Across Europe, 24,000 megafarms have been stamped into the landscape. Nearly 2,000 of them operate in the UK, including Norfolk, now crowned the “megafarm capital of Europe.” Twenty-five million animals in one county, locked in windowless sheds. In some towns, there are 79 chickens per person. Not per family. Per human being.
What are these places if not kill units? Not farms, not countryside, not “tradition.” They are factories for death. The industry knows the image is bad. They know public concern about animal welfare is growing. Enter the Better Chicken Commitment. Slower-growing breeds. Lower stocking densities. A promise of “higher welfare.”
Sounds good? Let’s pull it apart.
The Numbers They Don’t Want You To See
Two recent studies — one out of Sweden, another examining U.S. and German markets — put the welfare reforms under the microscope. Both found the same paradox: individual chickens may suffer less, but more chickens end up being used overall.
Slower growth = longer lives in confinement. Instead of being slaughtered at 35 days, slower breeds live 49 or 56 days. Still babies, but long enough to consume more feed, use more land, and occupy sheds for longer stretches.
More chickens overall. To meet the same demand, farms breed more birds. One model found a 48% increase in the number of chickens farmed and a 69% increase in total time spent confined.
More resources, more pollution. Feed, housing, land clearing, water, waste — all multiplied to keep more bodies alive for longer.
Yes, the individual pain of broken legs, organ failure, and “excruciating” suffering is reduced. But in the trade-off, far more animals endure mild discomfort, deprivation, and imprisonment. A welfare win on paper. A catastrophe in practice.
So let’s be clear: the Better Chicken Commitment doesn’t mean fewer animals suffering. It means more.
The Climate Fig Leaf
Industry defenders will argue: fine, welfare costs a bit more, but at least chicken is “climate-friendly.”
The Swedish research tested this. Using slower-growing breeds raised emissions between 15% and 30%. More feed, longer lifespans, bigger environmental footprint.
Even then, the authors remind us: chicken still outperforms cows and pigs in raw emissions. But that’s a rigged comparison. When the baseline is mass deforestation, methane-soaked beef, and pig slurry poisoning rivers, “better than beef” is not a triumph. It’s a distraction.
Slower chickens still require soy fields bulldozed out of South America. Still require shipping feed across oceans. Still require slaughterhouses that terrify and kill millions daily. Climate-friendly? No. It’s simply a slower conveyor belt to the same graveyard.
The Manufactured Chicken
Let’s not forget what a “broiler” chicken is. Not a chicken in any natural sense, but a body warped by decades of genetic tinkering. They grow 400% faster than they did 70 years ago. Their legs snap. Their organs give out. Many collapse before slaughter. Profit margins already account for a percentage of corpses.
And the parents of these birds — the “breeder flocks” — live in a special kind of hell. Starved every day to stop them eating themselves to death before they’ve produced enough eggs. That’s not a metaphor. These birds live in chronic hunger, pacing and pecking at the air, their lives measured in the absence of food.
Slower-growing breeds don’t fix this. They still live in confinement. Still deprived of everything that makes life meaningful: dust-bathing, foraging, exploring, raising their young. They still end in a slaughterhouse, terrified and gasping. Call it slower if you want. Call it “better.” It is still ownership. Still domination. Still breeding someone into existence with death already scheduled.
The “Better” Lie
Here’s where the charities come in. Some NGOs and lobby groups saw the writing on the wall and scrambled for a rebrand: welcome to the era of “high welfare” factory farms. The Better Chicken Commitment, for example, promises slower-growing breeds and more space.
Sounds good?
Here’s what it actually means:
🔺 48% more chickens farmed.
🔺 69% more time in confinement.
🔺 More land cleared, more feed grown, more wild animals displaced.
🔺 More water, more waste, more lives — all for the same amount of flesh on shelves.
All that suffering stretched over longer lives. A welfare policy that increases the number of individuals being bred, used, and killed. It’s not reform. It’s expansion in disguise. And here’s the part that still sticks with me: I asked about this years ago, back in 2019, while briefly working at The Humane League. I raised the point that “better” breeds meant more animals, more land, more feed, more destruction. The response? Silence. Now the data is out. And it’s damning.
If you ever donated to one of these charities, you might want to ask where your money went. Because it wasn’t to spare chickens. It was to help the industry kill more of them — with a better public image.
Welfare Math: The Bird Is Still Inside
The Swedish study crunched the numbers and calculated “trade-off ratios” — the balance between emissions increases and welfare improvements. The lowest ratio was reducing stocking density: around 0.1. The highest came from slower-growing breeds: 0.9. On paper, that means modest environmental costs for modest welfare gains. But look closer. What this really measures is how many more resources we are willing to burn to keep chickens alive in cages a little longer before killing them. The bird is still inside. The system hasn’t changed. And even if the numbers were perfect — even if emissions went down and welfare went up — the moral equation would remain the same. Because no ratio can make it ethical to enslave another being.
This Isn’t Broken. It’s Designed.
Factory farming is not a failure of regulation. It is a system functioning exactly as designed: to turn someone into something as quickly and cheaply as possible. That’s why the UK government lets 75% of megafarms break environmental laws without punishment. That’s why NGOs push commitments that benefit corporations more than animals. That’s why “food security” is waved like a shield while rivers are poisoned, forests are bulldozed, and chickens are suffocated by the billions.
This isn’t an accident. It’s the business model.
And the more we chase “better” welfare schemes, the more we entrench the system.
The Only Ethical Commitment
So here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can’t reform supremacy. You reject it.
There is no welfare fix for a slaughterhouse. There is no humane way to take a life that doesn’t want to end. There is no sustainable way to keep billions of animals in confinement who were never meant to exist.
The only ethical commitment is abolition. No more megafarms. No more chicken commitments. No more welfare illusions.
The solution is not slower chickens. The solution is no chickens. Not in cages. Not in sheds. Not on plates.
It’s time to stop playing welfare math and face the reality: every “better” chicken is still a chicken who wanted to live. Every reform is another way to justify breeding someone into slavery.
The only path forward is to stop. Stop breeding them. Stop using them. Stop pretending the problem is growth rates when the problem is exploitation.
Go vegan. Reject the system. Choose justice.