I’m a French journalist currently investigating the broiler chicken industry and the Better Chicken Commitment campaign.
In Europe, we’re seeing some progress with the European Chicken Commitment, and some member states are taking measures in favor of broiler chickens; things like Denmark agreeing to phase out state procurement of fast-growing chickens, Sweden developing higher welfare criteria for public procurement in line with the ECC, Norway’s Animal Ethics Council recommending a ban on fast-growing breeds altogether.
My question is: What can be said about the US context? I believe CIWF’s 2024 ChickenTrack report for the US will be published very soon. But I’m particularly interested to know if there is any government-level /​ regulatory /​ public procurement work regarding broiler chickens currently going on in the US?
The only thing I can think of is Legal Impact for Chickens doing civil litigation initiatives. I don’t think I’ve come across anything else in recent months.
Am I missing something? Or is the US approach indeed almost entirely market-driven through corporate commitments, with no federal or state-level regulatory initiatives currently being pursued?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Thank you for posting this important question—and for mentioning Legal Impact for Chickens.
We have done some work to attempt to improve broiler chicken welfare through the U.S. government’s executive branch, by submitting comments on proposed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations. We asked USDA to address broiler welfare in its salmonella response, and to make chicken-meat companies warn growers about animal-welfare issues. And we asked the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) to give birds more space in order to avoid deadly diseases.
Other orgs have sued the U.S. government executive branch to try to slow down slaughter line speeds. Faster slaughter line speeds are worse for chicken welfare.
None of the above-mentioned efforts were focused on fast-growth breeding, though. There’s definitely more that needs to be done.