95% of chickens grow so fast they struggle to walk
When people pick up a pack of chicken meat, it’s likely that the vast majority would assume that the animal has had a good life. But the reality is shocking - and it might put them off their dinner. Around 95% of the birds reared in the UK, nearly a billion every year, grow so fast that if they were a child they would weigh 28 stone at three years old. They have been genetically selected to grow rapidly and beyond their natural size, reaching slaughter weight in just 35 days - nearly half the time it took in the 1950s.
How can it be legal that 95% of the meat chickens we produce grow so fast they can struggle to walk?
Legal Challenge to ‘Frankenchickens’
In December 2024, a landmark judicial review challenge by The Humane League UK, which was supported by key evidence from the RSPCA, fell short of making a specific judgement regarding the legality of rearing fast-growing meat chickens. However, the judges stated that the law was clear: keeping animals for farming ‘is prohibited unless it can be reasonably expected… that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health and welfare’.
The judges agreed that if the welfare consequences of fast-growing breeds of chicken are proven, then ‘the keeping of such a breed would be prohibited by law’. Dismissing the challenge on a technicality, the Court of Appeal’s interpretation of the law could still have seismic implications for the more-than a billion chickens slaughtered for meat in the UK every year.
Most meat chickens ‘don’t have a life worth living’
Many of these chickens - sentient animals who experience pleasure and pain - struggle to walk properly, suffer from heart defects and lesions on their legs, and are more likely to experience sudden death. An RSPCA report - Eat, Sit, Suffer, Repeat - concluded these faster-growing chickens could be considered as having a life not worth living. If this doesn’t constitute detrimental welfare, it’s hard to imagine what would.
It’s already been proven it doesn’t have to be this way. In 2006, the RSPCA pioneered new welfare standards for chickens reared for their meat, which permitted only the use of slower growing breeds, which are healthier and have improved welfare. At the time, this was revolutionary and met significant resistance from industry but, over the years, it resulted in the development of new, higher welfare breeds of chickens coming to market.
RSPCA Assured chicken is not only higher welfare, but has demonstrated that it is commercially viable to rear these slower growing breeds. Most major supermarkets offer an RSPCA Assured chicken range. So there is no reason, beyond seeking out faster profit, to allow chickens to grow at this rate. The Lord Justices confirmed in the judicial review that there is no other reason for faster-growing chickens to exist other than for farming purposes.
Chicken suffering has been normalised
The reality is that most of us don’t think much about where our meat comes from. Labelling on our food can be confusing and misleading, with names of quaint-sounding farms and pictures of happy animals roaming free. That’s why we welcome the Government’s announcement in June 2025 that they will consider mandatory method of production labelling - a move supported by 99% of the public who answered the Government consultation. This will lead to better transparency and give consumers the power to vote with their wallets for better welfare.
Kate Parkes, RSPCA poultry expert, said: “Ninety four percent of people currently choose to eat meat - but government and industry are not transparent about the realities faced by farmed animals like faster growing chickens.
“There is very little - if any - specific legal protection for many of the species we farm - such as salmon, trout, turkeys, dairy cattle, beef cattle and sheep. Also, a recent report revealed that the state carries out welfare assessments on less than 3% of farms in the UK each year. Society has normalised and legalised staggering suffering on an unfathomable scale, and it’s too easy for us to turn a blind eye.”
The rapid growth of an industry that has a primary focus on producing more, faster and cheaper - at the expense of sentient beings who can count and show empathy for their flockmates - is the biggest, and most difficult animal welfare challenge we face today. And it risks our own health and that of the planet too.
Slower growing breeds of chickens alone will not solve all the problems on our farms. Wider problems range from the use of cages in farming, to allowing the import of products that would be illegal to produce in our own country. The disappearance of faster growing chickens would be a demonstrable and significant improvement in the lives of literally billions and billions of sentient animals; and we must support those pioneering, forward thinking farmers who want to lead the way and do more. Alongside this, we need to demand better for the animals many of us choose to eat - better legal protection and better regulation.
Society has normalised and legalised staggering suffering on an unfathomable scale, and it’s too easy for us to turn a blind eye.
A kinder society for farmed animals
We consider ourselves a nation of animal lovers - and while the judicial review was ultimately lost - what happens next will say something about the kind of society we want to be - one where we consider our individual and collective impact on each other and animals or one where we will continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of billions of chickens. While the judgment of the Court of Appeal will give the animal welfare sector, the farming industry and the UK Government food for thought, there remains nothing stopping shoppers ending this trade themselves, by always choosing higher welfare at the checkout. Let’s all make the right choice for them, and us.