Around 850 million meat chickens or ‘broilers’ are reared every year in the UK, far more than any other type of farmed animal (with the exception of farmed fish). Meat chickens can be reared in several different types of system.

Indoor reared
Most meat chickens are reared in large, closed, buildings, where temperature, artificial lighting, ventilation, food and water are all controlled to ensure that the birds grow efficiently.
 

Food and water are provided in lines along the length of the building and wood shavings are provided as a floor covering. Typically, around 25,000 birds are housed together within a building, but some can house 50,000 birds. There can be several buildings on a farm - for example, an average ‘grower’ may have 140,000 birds on one farm in a number of buildings, and will rear just under one million birds per year.

The amount of space provided per bird within a building is commonly referred to as the ‘stocking density’ (the total weight of the birds in a given amount of space, on average). The number of birds kept within a building can be so high that each bird is allocated very little space.

For example, a stocking density of 38 kilogrammes per sqaure metre works out to be around 19, two kilogramme birds for each square metre of floor space. This stocking density provides less space per bird than the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and less space than that allocated to laying hens in cages.

Chickens may be kept in near-constant dim light. This encourages them to eat more and move around less, which maximises their growth rate, and also reduces electricity costs.

Meat chickens have been selected to grow fast so as to produce the maximum amount of meat in the shortest possible time. It usually takes five to six weeks for the birds to reach the desired weight of around 2.2 kilogrammes. They are then caught, placed into crates and transported to the abattoir.

Improved indoor reared
A smaller proportion of meat chickens are reared in indoor systems and are provided with conditions that improve their welfare. These systems are similar to those described above, but include improvements, such as:
 

• the provision of natural daylight through windows
   
• reduced stocking densities
   
• environmental enrichment such as straw bales for the birds to peck at.
   

In addition, slower growing breeds of chicken may be used.

Systems which allow access to the outdoors
Meat chickens are reared in systems that allow them access to an additional outdoor range area for part of their lives.
 

The chickens are able to access the range area though ‘popholes’ in the side of the building during daylight hours. The laws requires free-range and organic systems to meet certain specific requirements, for example, requiring lower stocking densities within the building and requiring birds to be older at slaughter.

Assurance schemes
Whether or not chickens are reared indoors or with access to the outdoors, their welfare is mainly affected by the standards they are reared to. Currently, most chickens are reared according to standards set by the UK chicken industry’s own assurance scheme – Assured Chicken Production (ACP).
 

However, chickens can be reared to higher welfare standards, such as the RSPCA welfare standards as used by the Freedom Food scheme, which contain hundreds of detailed requirements aimed at improving chicken welfare. In addition to ACP standards, some supermarkets may also require their suppliers to rear chickens to standards that the supermarket has set itself, which can be higher than those set by ACP. We’re working in lots of different ways to try to improve the conditions in which all meat chickens are reared, transported and slaughtered.