Chipotle has revised their standard for the raising of broiler chickens to reflect those of the Global Animal Partnership’s (GAP) standard for breeding, space allotment, living conditions and slaughter. No surprise, poultry trade groups, producers and farmers are pushing back, while animal welfare advocacy groups are supportive of the restaurant chain’s move
In an attempt to regain consumer trust, and in the wake of quarterly profits down 76%, Chipotle Mexican Grill recently issued a statement regarding a new commitment to their mission of “making better food accessible to everyone” and identified “a number of issues critical to the welfare of chickens raised for meat.”
The statement indicated that Chipotle was revising their standard for the raising of broiler chickens to reflect those of the Global Animal Partnership’s (GAP) standard for breeding, space allotment, living conditions and slaughter. The company will begin requiring suppliers to demonstrate compliance with these standards via audits by Chipotle’s internal Animal Welfare team as well as third party auditors.
No surprise, poultry trade groups, producers and farmers are pushing back, while animal welfare advocacy groups are supportive of the restaurant chain’s move.
Tom Super, president of the National Chicken Council (NCC) says his organization certainly “supports the concept of providing choice to consumers so they have the ability to choose products that take into account many factors, including taste preference, personal values and affordability.”
However, Super says the NCC “does not believe that one production system should be vilified at the expense of another.”
Neal Patterson, owner of Patterson Ranch, LLC, a poultry farm in Mountville, South Carolina, operates four poultry houses, each over 39,000 square feet.
“The birds live in a computer controlled/sensor controlled environment with free access to feed and water, and just the right amount of heat, AC, venting and fans,” says Patterson. “I walk every house daily to check on their health. These birds get top care from me, and weekly inspections from the producer’s service tech.”
Super says a change to current broiler-raising standards like the ones Patterson operates under would have both an environmental and economic impact.
A new NCC study concluded that the shift from conventional production to slow-growing production of broilers in the U.S. would result in “increased feed, land and water utilization, more manure output and greater production cost that will ultimately have to be absorbed by consumers.”
Super is proud of the job his industry is doing on behalf of the welfare of the chickens they raise. “We’re proud of the care we take to ensure the health of our chickens, which has led our national flock to being the healthiest it’s ever been,” says Super. “We are committed to providing this information to the public – which is why we recently launched our Chicken Check In program – to answer questions about how chickens are grown and raised.”
Patterson wishes that producers would step up more in an advocacy role to push back on the animal welfare advocates.
“It’s difficult to get the truth out there,” says Patterson, “to convince consumers and activist groups that we’re doing things right. People just naturally are drawn to drama, so the negative stuff gets much more publicity than the day-to-day work of what we do.”
Matthew Prescott, Senior Director of Food Policy for the Humane Society of the United States has a very different point of view—he believes the poultry industry is “playing chicken” with consumers.
In his recent opinion article, picked up by several news outlets, Prescott detailed a disturbing view of how chickens are raised, and suggested that, “the chicken industry seems to have its head buried in the sand.”
“While some family farmers raise heritage-breed birds on pasture,” says Prescott, “the vast majority of chickens come from factory farms where they’re bred to grow so large so fast they suffer crippling leg deformities and heart attacks (because their legs and organs can’t keep up with their enormous size). They live cramped together in barren, dark environments; which is no way to house social, intelligent animals. And they’re killed using a system that’s riddled with cruelty from start to finish, including being forced upside down into metal shackles while fully conscious.”
“The industry does have their head it the sand,” agrees Patterson, “but not the way Matthew Prescott means…it’s really because our industry is not pushing back hard enough against the other side with facts and education…we’re just not showing the consumer what actually goes on and why we do it the way we do.”
Prescott contends that the poultry industry’s response and their attempt “to convince companies and consumers that the concerns being tackled by Chipotle and so many others are invalid.”
He believes there is an “ever-growing consumer support around these issues, and to companies like Chipotle and so many others,” and says, “the tide is indeed turning for farm animals.”
Super believes the support can be turned the other way if consumers were vigilant about seeking the truth.
“We’re committed to continual improvement, but those improvements should be dictated by science and data, not animal rights activists or emotional rhetoric that is unsupported by facts,” says Super.
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