What’s The Deal With Factory Farmed Chicken?*
Broiler chickens are farmed for their meat, and make up 95 percent of the land animals slaughtered for food globally each year (More than 70 billion chickens around the world in 2019).
The U.S. is the leading producer of broiler chickens in the world and chickens are typically raised with 20,000 other birds in a shed that's 16,000 square feet, resulting in less than a square-foot for each bird.
Baby chickens in factory farms start life by undergoing a painful, unanesthetized amputation of about one-third of their beaks. The industry does this to prevent chickens from pecking each other, sometimes to death, a behavior that results from living in overcrowded and stressful confinement.
Broiler chickens have been selectively bred to grow so quickly that if a human grew at the same rate they would weigh 660 pounds by the time they were two months old!
Farmers generally keep the lights on in the grow houses to deprive broiler chickens of sleep, which forces the birds to spend more time eating than they naturally would.
Broiler chickens reach their market weight in about six weeks. At that point in their lives, catchers put them in crates and they are then driven for up to 12 hours without food or water to the slaughterhouse.
The chickens can wait in crates on trucks for several hours in transport before they are killed. Because of their poor health and living conditions, they would likely die within two weeks of when they are transported even if they were not slaughtered.
Factory farming denies chickens the freedom to behave naturally: to build nests, spread their wings, take dust baths to clean themselves, scratch for food, bond with their children and other flock members, or live full lives.
*Facts sourced from The Factory Farming Awareness Coalition