News from THL UK: Judge rules on our historic Frankenchicken case
By Molly Archer-Zeff @ 2024-12-16T11:50 (+75)
Four years of work has led to his moment. When we started this, we knew it would be big. A battle of David versus Goliath as we took the Government to court. But we also knew that it was the right thing to do, to fight for the millions of Frankenchickens that were suffering because of the way that they had been bred. And on Friday 13th December, we got the result we had been nervously waiting for.
Represented by Advocates for Animals, four years ago we started the process to take the Government to court, arguing that fast-growing chicken breeds, known as Frankenchickens, are illegal under current animal welfare laws.
After a loss, and an appeal, in October 2024 we entered the courts once more. And the judgment is now in on one of the most important legal cases for animals in history.
The judges have ruled in favour on our main argument - that the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will suffer because of how they have been bred. This is a huge moment for animals in the UK.
A billion Frankenchickens are raised with suffering coded into their DNA each year. They are bred to grow too big, too fast, to make the most profit possible. In light of this ruling, we believe that farmers are breaking the law if they continue to keep these chickens.
However, Defra, the Government department responsible for farming, has been let off the hook on a technicality. Because Defra has been silent on fast-growing breeds of chicken, the judges found they had no concrete policy that they could rule against. This means that our case has been dismissed and the judges have not ordered Defra to act.
It is clear: by not addressing this major animal welfare crisis, Defra has failed billions of animals - and the farming community. This must change.
While this ruling has failed to force the Government to act, it has confirmed our view that farmers are acting criminally by using fast-growing breeds. We will now explore bringing private prosecutions against mega-farms that use Frankenchickens.
The cruel use of Frankenchickens is possibly the biggest animal welfare crisis of our time. With your continued support, we will use this new ruling to do everything we can to bring it to an end.
ClimateDoc @ 2024-12-20T23:15 (+29)
Whilst I salute the effort and progress here, this post does seem rather full of spin, given that from what I can tell the court ruling was against the animal advocates. I'd rather see posts that present the facts more clearly.
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T00:35 (+4)
Wow, yeah, I was quite misled by the lead. Can anyone give a more independent assessment of what this actually means legally?
VettedCauses @ 2024-12-21T02:02 (+32)
The Humane League (THL) filed a lawsuit against the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the Defra Secretary) alleging that the Defra Secretary’s policy of permitting farmers to farm fast-growing chickens unlawfully violated paragraph 29 of Schedule 1 to the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007.
Paragraph 29 of Schedule 1 to the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007 states the following:
- “Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.” [1]
THL’s case was dismissed.
THL appealed the dismissal, and again THL’s case was dismissed (this most recent dismissal is what THL’s post is about).
In this most recent dismissal, the Court clarified the meaning of Paragraph 29 as follows:
- “Paragraph 29 was not concerned with the environmental conditions in which animals were kept; it was concerned with the characteristics of the breed, and with detriment which could not be mitigated by improving the animal’s environment”
- “Accordingly, paragraph 29 was a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals whose genotype and phenotype meant that, regardless of the conditions in which they were kept, they could not be kept without detriment to their health or welfare” [2]
Essentially, the Court ruled that Paragraph 29 is only violated if an animal is bred such that it cannot avoid genetically caused health/welfare problems even under perfect environmental conditions (i.e. giving the animal the best possible food/diet, a perfect living environment, and world class medical treatment). This allows farmers to continue to farm animals so long as their genetic issues can theoretically be mitigated by improving conditions, even if those conditions are unlikely to be implemented in practice.
For example, let’s say there is a genetically selected breed of chicken that under normal factory farming conditions grows so fast that their legs snap under their weight by the time they are a month old. Under the Court’s ruling, this would not violate Paragraph 29, so long as this problem (and other genetically caused problems) could theoretically be mitigated with better environmental conditions (i.e. giving the chicken the best possible food/diet, a perfect living environment, and world class medical treatment).
Since the Court offered this interpretation of Paragraph 29, all trial courts in the UK (except for those in Northern Ireland and Scotland) are now required to use this interpretation of Paragraph 29 when making rulings.
From our understanding, this is not a favorable interpretation of Paragraph 29, as it makes it extremely difficult to prove that a violation of Paragraph 29 has occurred. Under this ruling, the only way to prove that a Paragraph 29 violation has occurred is by proving the health/welfare problems encountered by an animal are completely unavoidable, even with absolutely perfect environmental conditions/treatment.
Because of this ruling, anyone who ever tries to claim a Paragraph 29 violation has occurred will have to meet this extremely high standard of evidence that the Court has laid out.
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T19:14 (+2)
Huh, yeah, seems like a loss to me.
Correspondingly, while the OP does not engage in "literally lying" I think sentences like "In light of this ruling, we believe that farmers are breaking the law if they continue to keep these chickens." and "The judges have ruled in favour on our main argument - that the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will suffer because of how they have been bred." strike me as highly misleading, or at least willfully ignorant, based on your explanation here.
MHR🔸 @ 2024-12-21T19:38 (+4)
Agreed, this post seems like it goes way against standard forum norms if this is correct
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T00:34 (+21)
Does someone have a rough fermi on the tradeoffs here? On priors it seems like chickens bred to be bigger would overall cause less suffering because they replace more than one chicken that isn't bread to be as big, but I would expect those chickens to suffer more. I can imagine it going either way, but I guess my prior is that it was broadly good for each individual chicken to weigh more.
I am a bit worried the advocacy here is based more on a purity/environmentalist perspective where genetically modifying animals is bad, but I don't give that perspective much weight. But it could also be great from a more cost-effectiveness/suffering-minimization oriented perspective, and would be curious in people's takes.
(Molly was asked this question in a previous post two months ago, but as far as I can tell responded mostly with orthogonal claims that don't really engage with the core ethical question, so am curious in other people's takes)
MichaelStJules @ 2024-12-21T19:15 (+23)
Welfare Footprint Project has analysis here, which they summarize:
Adoption of the Better Chicken Commitment, with use of a slower-growing breed reaching a slaughter weight of approximately 2.5 Kg at 56 days (ADG=45-46 g/day) is expected to prevent “at least” 33 [13 to 53] hours of Disabling pain, 79 [-99 to 260] hours of Hurtful and 25 [5 to 45] seconds of Excruciating pain for every bird affected by this intervention (only hours awake are considered). These figures correspond to a reduction of approximately 66%, 24% and 78% , respectively, in the time experienced in Disabling, Hurtful and Excruciating pain relative to a conventional scenario due to lameness, cardiopulmonary disorders, behavioral deprivation and thermal stress.
The reduction in suffering per chicken is probably >24% if this analysis is correct, and it accounts for longer lives. My guess is >50%, giving substantial weight to disabling pain relative to milder pain. Accounting for more chickens necessary for the same amount of meat (EDIT: although WFP assumes they grow to the same weight) wouldn't flip things. (And there would be a reduction in demand to partially offset this, due to higher costs per kg of meat.)
Lameness-related pain primarily due to their breed seems to be the largest source of their suffering and responsible for a lot of suffering, so it makes sense to me that slower growing breeds would be better off.
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T20:24 (+6)
Thank you! This is the kind of analysis I was looking for.
MHR🔸 @ 2024-12-21T19:31 (+4)
I think it's worth noting here that (if I'm understanding it right) the alternative breeds recommended by the better chicken commitment are slower-growing but don't have a lower max weight. And the welfare footprint project numbers on pain durations already account for the longer time to reach full weight.
MichaelStJules @ 2024-12-21T19:37 (+4)
I think it's worth noting here that (if I'm understanding it right) the alternative breeds recommended by the better chicken commitment are slower-growing but don't have a lower max weight.
I'm not sure, but the optimal weight at slaughter could be lower, which I think Lusk et al. (blog post) found for the US. Even if they could reach the same maximum weight, it may be more profitable to slaughter them at lower weights.
And the welfare footprint project numbers on pain durations already account for the longer time to reach full weight.
Ya, I intended to imply that, but could have worded things better. I've edited my comment.
MHR🔸 @ 2024-12-21T20:09 (+4)
Gotcha, that makes sense! Even if producers slaughter at a lower weight, I think the number of chicken-days of life per kg of meat shouldn't change much relative to what goes into the WFP analysis. So I don't think that producers slaughtering earlier changes the quantity of time spent suffering very significantly, just whether it's distributed among fewer longer-lived chickens or more shorter-lived chickens.
MichaelStJules @ 2024-12-21T19:41 (+2)
Ah, ya:
For the reformed scenario, represented by the use of a slower-growing strain, we assumed an average ADG of 45-46 g/day, hence that the same slaughter weight would be reached in approximately 56 days.
jcw @ 2024-12-21T20:27 (+5)
The chickens don't end up weighing more at the point that they go to slaughter - the faster growth rate is so that they get to the same slaughter weight in a shorter space of time, which uses less feed. Chickens with faster growth rates therefore aren't replacing more than one slower-growing chicken.
The slower-growing breeds live for longer, which would be bad if it was extending the same pain intensity over a longer period of time, but this seems like it isn't what happens: https://welfarefootprint.org/broilers/
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T21:39 (+4)
Sure, I don't think it makes a difference whether the chicken grows to a bigger size in total, or grows to a bigger size more quickly, both would establish a prior that you need fewer years of chicken-suffering for the same amount of meat, and as such that this would be good (barring other considerations).
Ozzie Gooen @ 2024-12-21T02:05 (+3)
(Obvious flag that I know very little about this specific industry)
Agreed that this seems like an important issue. Some quick takes:
Less immediately- obvious pluses/minuses to this sort of campaign:
- Plus #1: I assume that anything the animal industry doesn't like would increase costs for raising chickens. I'd correspondingly assume that we should want costs to be high (though it would be much better if it could be the government getting these funds, rather than just decreases in efficiency).
- Plus #2: It seems possible that companies have been selecting for growth instead of for well-being. Maybe, if they just can't select for growth, then selecting more for not-feeling-pain would be cheaper.
- Minus #1: Focusing on the term "Frankenchicken" could discourage other selective breeding or similar, which could be otherwise useful for very globally beneficial attributes, like pain mitigation.
- Ambiguous #1: This could help stop further development here. I assume that it's possible to later use selective breeding and similar to continue making larger / faster growing chickens.
I think I naively feel like the pluses outweigh the negatives. Maybe I'd give this a 80% chance, without doing much investigation. That said, I'd also imagine there might well be more effective measures with a much clearer trade-off. The question of "is this a net-positive thing" is arguably not nearly as important as "are there fairly-clearly better things to do."
Lastly, for all of that, I do want to just thanks those helping animals like this. It's easy for me to argue things one way or the other, but I generally have serious respect for those working to change things, even if I'm not sure if their methods are optimal. I think it's easy to seem combative on this, but we're all on a similar team here.
In terms of a "rough fermi analysis", as I work in the field, I think the numeric part of this is less important at this stage than just laying out a bunch of the key considerations and statistics. What I first want is a careful list of costs and benefits - that seems mature, fairly creative, and unbiased.
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T19:05 (+2)
- Plus #1: I assume that anything the animal industry doesn't like would increase costs for raising chickens. I'd correspondingly assume that we should want costs to be high (though it would be much better if it could be the government getting these funds, rather than just decreases in efficiency).
I think this feels like a very aggressive zero-sum mindset. I agree that sometimes you want to have an attitude like this, but I at least at the present think that acting with the attitude of "let's just make animal industry as costly as possible" would understandable cause backlash, make it harder to come to agreements, and I think a reasonable justice system would punish people who do such things (even if they think they are morally in the right).
Ozzie Gooen @ 2024-12-21T20:58 (+3)
I feel like that's pretty unfair.
You asked for a "rough fermi estimate of the trade-offs", I gave you a list of potential trade-offs.
If we're willing to make decisions with logic like, "while genetically modifying unnaturally fast-growing chickens in factory farms would increase the pain of each one, perhaps the math works out so that there's less pain overall", I feel like adding considerations like, "this intervention will also make meat more expensive, which will reduce use" is a pretty vanilla consideration.
Habryka @ 2024-12-21T21:38 (+2)
No, those are two totally separate types of considerations? In one you are directly aiming to work against the goals of someone else in a zero-sum fashion, the other one is just a normal prediction about what will actually happen?
You really should have very different norms about how you are dealing with adversarial considerations and how you are dealing with normal causal/environmental considerations. I don't care about calling them "vanilla" or not, I think we should generally have a high prior against arguments of the form "X is bad, Y is hurting X, therefore Y is good".
Toby Tremlett🔹 @ 2024-12-18T16:02 (+2)
So pleased to see this! Please update us on the next steps when you know about them. (Though I understand that sometimes it is better not to share details about legal cases).
Specifically, I'm wondering: does the judge agreeing with the key argument open up other potential legal cases, for example? If DEFRA's labelling scheme became a reality, would that mean they'd have to make statements about the wellbeing of Frankenchickens?