Five years ago, at the (then unknown) cusp of a global pandemic, the world was a very different place in many ways. One of the things that has remained however, is the positive trend in chicken consumption by humans. In our We need to talk about chicken resource published in 2020, we reported that 850 million chickens were reared for meat in the UK every year. This figure has now risen to approximately 1 billion. Our latest Public Attitudes Survey showed that the consumption of fresh chicken saw a notable rise over the past year, with 26% reporting to have increased how much they eat over the past year.
Almost all of these chickens are reared in industrial livestock systems, in cramped, unhealthy environments and live very short lives, as genetically they have been selected to grow fast. Finishing in around 35 days, their infant skeleton is carrying the weight of an adult and this inherently causes problems. They are fed millions of tons of soy which is imported, causing mass deforestation especially in South America. While chicken is often seen as a healthier alternative to red and processed meat, its nutritional value has declined significantly over the past 50 years. Today’s chicken contains nearly three times more fat, significantly fewer key micronutrients, including 70% less iron and 26% less phosphorus, and five times less Omega-3 fatty acids.
Chicken production cannot continue in this way - we need to produce less and move away from intensive production levels. However, how we do this is still a contentious and opaque topic of conversation, with most people unable to imagine a return to the nostalgic smaller home farms where chickens ran free and ate from around the house, yard and land. Or even further back when the red jungle fowl (the species from which modern chickens evolved) lived in woodland edges in groups of about 30 birds and lived completely on what they foraged.
But imagination and bravery is what’s needed to plot what is possible, and thankfully, there are those who are not afraid to explore the possibilities.
Impeckable Poultry
Planton farm is many things - a pasture fed beef farm, a poultry farm, and a peer to peer regenerative farming teaching and community hub.
Run by Clare Hill and Annie Rayner and their team, one of the most inspiring elements of Clare and Annie’s work is their pilot project on rearing dual purpose chickens (bred to lay eggs as well as be used for meat). Their aim is to ‘explore the practicalities and sustainability of dual-purpose, pasture-raised poultry as an integrated enterprise for UK farms’.
The chickens are reared from a day old up to between 16 and 20 weeks, moving from an enclosed nursery (brooder) on wheels to self-designed chicken sheds (whose doors are cleverly measured at an assistant farm manager appropriate height), and to the flowering meadows beyond. Although for now organic feed is purchased, the long term aim of the project is to use zero external feed. More trials are needed to assess how to best meet the nutritional needs of the birds effectively from the landscape, but until an ideal dual purpose breed(s) is identified, working on the feed requirements could be futile as there could be variations. In the meantime, the team experimented with black soldier fly larvae, sprouting whole wheat from a local farm and fermenting.
The pilot aims to answer questions around what is possible, so it can become a blueprint to be replicated:
- What is the ideal group size and structure?
- How can we feed poultry regeneratively?
- Is a dual purpose bird feasible (females kept for eggs, males kept for meat)?
- How should we manage the birds for optimum regeneration of ecosystems?
- What's the most efficient way to house poultry?
- Should we reconsider our consumption of chicken altogether?
When Eating Better wrote our foundational resource We need to talk about industrial livestock production, we agreed that it showcased the ‘why’ of needing to move away from industrial forms of production, and that what was needed next was a pathway to ‘how’. The Impeckable Poultry project is a brave leap into the practical exploration of the wish for a different future for farming, and we couldn’t be more excited to see where it leads.
Such initiatives need support, funding and awareness raising; the time of ‘why’ is long past, all we need now is the bravery, creativity and solidarity to explore the ‘how’.