Poultry Archives | Sustainable Food Trust

From scraps to soil: How retired hens are reshaping farming in Cyprus

Alice Frost — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 14:47:05 +0000

In Cyprus, the Kot-Kot project shows how animals, food waste and farming can be reconnected to restore soils and reduce reliance on chemicals. But as writer and researcher David McKenzie explores, the challenges it faces highlight a broader dilemma: will food systems reward regenerative, mixed models like this – or continue to favour industrial approaches that externalise their costs?

There is no single solution to building sustainable food futures. Nor is there a silver bullet for establishing resilient food systems that can best respond to the unpredictable impacts and challenges of climate change. It will take a concerted effort, with myriad approaches and solutions working together.

Still, some solutions have more of a ‘feel-good’ factor than others. And this might be one of them.

An olive grove in Cyprus has been taking an innovative (yet incredibly simple) approach to enhancing the organic matter of their soil, while also helping combat the island’s serious food waste problem and providing a means of reducing chemical fertiliser and pesticide use. It’s doing this by taking retired hens from the egg industry and having them roam free on the grove, fed by unwanted food-waste collected from local schools, restaurants, hotels and businesses.

The project, called Kot-Kot, has been running since early 2024 at Akaki Grove, 30 kilometers west of the capital Nicosia. It was instigated by farmer Elena Christoforos, who inherited the semi-abandoned olive grove from her grandfather, and Nicolas Netien, an environmental engineer and soil biologist who Christoforos brought on board in 2021 to help revive the olive and citrus trees.

“My focus is always on growing soil,” says Netien, who has been designing agro-ecological systems in line with a permaculture framework for 20 years. “I grow soil and let the trees grow themselves.”

Within that framework, Netien looks for any and every technique to increase organic matter in the soil, he says, focusing on maintaining a healthy microbiome for the trees’ root systems. In line with this, a diverse ground cover of plants was first established at Akaki Grove to enrich and protect the soil. But Netien wanted to “speed up” these natural processes and carbon cycles by having animals grazing the ground cover.

Christoforos agreed, but as a vegan, she has a zero-kill policy at the grove, instead favouring the maintenance of balanced, diverse ecosystems in which pests kill each other. She insisted that they could only do it if the animals were not to be killed or used for egg, meat or milk production.

That’s where the “happy hens” come in. Animals are expensive to keep and to feed, and if they weren’t going to have them for meat, egg or dairy production then it made sense, as Netien puts it, to find animals that nobody wants. Chickens, in particular, are “great workers” for the olive trees, since they not only clear the ground cover and unwanted weeds, reverting nutrients back into the soil via their fertile droppings but also provide excellent pest control by pecking at the larvae of insects like the infamous olive fly, traditional adversary of Mediterranean olive growers.

And so, with the help of free-range egg farmer and olive grower Nicholas Schizas, Kot-Kot managed to adopt a few hundred two-year-old hens coming out of the egg industry, who have finished their productive laying years and otherwise would’ve been slaughtered (yet still with plenty of ‘retirement’ years ahead, having a life expectancy of eight years or more).

From there, the next issue was sourcing food for the hens. Again, without any income that would usually come from egg or meat production, this needed to be cheap (if not free).

Coincidentally, however, Cyprus has a terrible food waste problem.

Cyprus generates by far the most food waste per capita of any country in Europe at around 300 kg per year, more than double the EU average of 132 kg/inhabitant. To make matters worse, the island nation’s waste management system has been mired in scandal and mismanagement for years, leading to hefty fines from the EU for continuously failing to meet waste management targets and failing to establish adequate facilities for processing mixed municipal waste (including organic waste), despite heavy EU funding specifically for such projects since at least 2015.

The Kot-Kot project’s food waste bins which are used as a food source for the chickens – credit to @kotkotcyprus on Instagram.

As a result, almost all of that EU-leading food waste in Cyprus ends up in landfill, where it decomposes and emits high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with nearly 30 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period (and a staggering 84 times more potent on a 20-year timescale).

Intercepting some of this food waste, therefore, seemed a logical way to provide food for the chickens, and so Kot-Kot started establishing food waste collection and donation networks with local schools, restaurants, hotels and businesses. This also led to the creation of a successful educational programme with one school in Nicosia, in which 800 kids collected scraps that they then fed to the chickens, while also learning about the importance of food production working with, rather than against, nature.

All in all, it’s a nice, happy story. The problem, however, is that it seems unlikely to continue, since the project has been unable to attract any kind of funding or support from local institutions or businesses.

One very important part of the project, according to Netien, is being able to measure its impact, so it can be used as a formula for others to follow. After all, if we are truly to transition to sustainable food and farming systems, we need quantifiable data – as facilitated by frameworks like the Global Farm Metric – that can prove positive results and highlight potential shortcomings of different solutions.

But having the ability to measure and quantify the impact precisely, is important for being able to replicate the Kot-Kot project elsewhere. For example, having more agronomic data on how many chickens should be grazed, at which parts of the olive grove (e.g. according to tree age), and for how long, based on leaf analysis from the olive trees showing exactly how much nitrogen the chickens are delivering (so as not to make the trees ‘too happy’ that they don’t produce fruit) would be useful. But until the project gets upscaled, access to such resources is limited.

Kot-Kot was initially estimated to be capable of scaling up to having 15,000 chickens on the grove, saving 550,000 kg of food waste from landfill (and 1.15 million kg of CO₂) per year, but it seems unlikely to be able to do so now.

The idea of using food scraps to feed chickens, or using chickens as a source of fertiliser and pest control as part of low-input farming systems, is nothing new, of course. Trudging the slop bucket out to the pigs or chooks (despite technically being illegal) is a well-worn trope of British barnyard life; ‘chicken tractors’ have been used by organic veg farmers for years; and municipal authorities in French and Belgian towns have even been handing out free chickens to local residents to help deal with food waste, for at least a decade.

The chickens at the Kot-Kot project scratch and fertilise the orange grove – credit to @kotkotcyprus on Instagram.

Still, what makes the Kot-Kot example different is that this is not just a small household or hobby farmer feeding a few scraps to a few hens. This is an example of a sophisticated farming system producing a high-quality commercial product: certified organic extra virgin olive oil, with exceptionally high levels of healthy polyphenols.

Similarly, using would-be waste food instead of costly energy-intensive stockfeed, while also lessening reliance on chemical fertilisers, could provide obvious advantages for building resilience and sustainability in farming systems.

But things aren’t quite that simple in the UK. There is an ongoing debate and discussion around allowing food waste to be used as livestock feed in the UK (especially in the pork industry, which shows strong producer support for the move), just as it had been for hundreds of years before the Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak in 2001. But it is still not allowed, and many are wary of bringing it back – particularly in an unregulated form and particularly with bird flu on the rise, whether or not it’s used to produce food for human consumption.

Then, of course, there’s the issue of corporate and industrial interest in food waste for biofuel production. Although there are serious concerns about the sustainability of biomethane production, it seems to be a large part of the UK Government’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050. Recent legislation obligating businesses (this year) and households (next year) to separate food waste from other waste streams, combined with plans to open dozens more biofuel processing plants, seems to back this up. Food waste is one of the two main ‘feedstocks’ used to make biofuel (along with specifically grown crops, such as maize), accounting for around 30% of biofuel inputs. In other words, this expanding industry has a vested interest in increasing the amount of food waste that gets converted into biofuel and would be unlikely to take kindly to the idea of it being given over to livestock production or other industries.

Going back to that opening idea, though, of needing a combination of different solutions in order to bring about true transition to sustainable food systems – it could be worth using the Kot-Kot example to help think about a few things.

Is the UK’s supercharged drive towards biomethane production putting a lot of eggs in one (potentially very damaging and unsustainable) basket? Instead, is it time to reassess the safe use of food waste as animal feed, and therefore reduce reliance on costly, energy, land and emissions-heavy feed? What about using food-waste-fed chickens, as one means of lessening reliance on the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers?

It may be a seemingly simple system, but the questions that Kot-Kot provokes about our wider food system are complex. By showing how the health of soil, plants, animals and people can be connected in mutually beneficial ways, Kot-Kot reminds us that the future of farming may lie not in single solutions, but in integrated, mixed systems that recycle nutrients, reduce waste and regenerate soils. Crucially, initiatives like Kot-Kot can only flourish if they are properly supported and rewarded for the multiple public goods they deliver and recognised as vital building blocks of a resilient food and farming future.

To find out more about the Kot-Kot project, visit their website or follow them on Instagram.

The post From scraps to soil: How retired hens are reshaping farming in Cyprus appeared first on Sustainable Food Trust.

Do chickens deserve better?

Alice Frost — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 13:45:56 +0000

As I write, we’re on Day Four of eating up a two-kilo chicken. Day One, we ate the crispy skin – glorious! – the wings, drumsticks, thighs, ‘oysters’, a sliver of breast, and the caramelised juices from the roasting pan along with roast potatoes and vegetables. Day Two was time to make Caesar Salad with the leftover breast, just add croutons, cos lettuce and an easy dressing made with mayonnaise, parmesan and a few anchovy fillets. Day Three, I boiled the carcase for stock. Day Four, with the addition of leek, carrot, celery, mushy tomatoes, broccoli stems and a handful of barley, I have a pot of soup that will serve eight people.

About once a month, I gulp when I pay £24 or thereabouts for my bird, which justifies its steep price tag because it is reared to the strictest legal ‘traditional’ and truly free-range standard, a slow-maturing variety fed on pasture and cereals, killed at 81 days.

When I do the final calculation, I have got six main course portions and eight starters/lunches from it, an economical proposition by any standard.

I could, of course, have bought the most basic grade of supermarket bird – a fast-growing specimen, miserably reared indoors, for as little as £1.56 a kilo. That’s about eight times less than I pay.

When chicken is this cheap, you can see why it has become the UK’s most popular animal protein, accounting for more than half of all the meat we eat. But price is only part of the reason why we consume so much of it.

Chicken sales have benefited from the relentless propaganda war against red meat, as a result of which, some consumers have been persuaded on the basis of selective and misrepresented data, that chicken is a better choice for planetary, animal and personal health. “I don’t eat red meat, but I do eat chicken sometimes.” How often have you heard that said?

Superficially, that stance might seem enlightened, but the reality is that in this country, UK or EU reared red meat from truly sustainable, pasture-based systems will almost always be a more genuinely progressive choice than chicken.

UK-reared beef, lamb, goat and venison is produced more extensively than chicken (and pork, for that matter). Sheep, cattle and other ruminants are rarely raised exclusively indoors in Britain. Farmed deer are still in the field for the best part of their lives. These animals live on a diet of mainly pasture and forage, making use of land that is often unsuitable for growing other crops. They can flourish eating grass, herbs and shrubs, effectively transforming sunlight, rainwater and soil nutrients into some of the most nutrient rich foods available to us.

While many UK-reared cattle are now finished on a diet that includes some cereals, they typically spend the greater part of their lives grazing outside, and for people seeking the most sustainable meat option, produce from 100% grass-fed animals is available. The more cereals that are fed to an animal, the less resource efficient its milk or meat is. This is because productive arable farmland, that could be used for growing food to be fed directly to people, is used for growing lower grade livestock cereals, from which only 17-30% of calories are returned for human consumption as meat or milk. Alternatively, the cereals used for animal feed may be grown in other regions of the world and shipped vast distances – which brings us back to chicken.

We eat a billion chickens each year in these isles, and they do not lead remotely content or natural lives. Almost all (95%) are from fast-growing breeds, intensively reared in vast, tightly packed, indoor facilities and they are slaughtered at as little as 28 days.

While chickens are a relatively small bird, their environmental footprint is significant. The Soil Association’s report, Peak Poultry, details that roughly three million tonnes of soya are imported into the UK each year, and most of it is bought by chicken producers to fatten chickens. Typically, this soya comes from Latin America, a crop that contributes to deforestation and pesticide use in biologically important areas, such as the Amazon and Cerrado.

There are at least 1,000 intensive poultry units throughout the UK. This marks an increase of more than 30% in the past decade as chicken has been marketed as a more compassionate, healthy and ecological alternative to red meat.

Given the complexity of the debate, it’s no wonder that so many of us accept that chicken is a more ethical choice. Put chicken on the menu, whether that’s in school dinner halls or restaurants, and you are likely to invite fewer religious objections, while ‘flexitarians’, and those who describe themselves as ‘plant-based’ eaters will view it as ‘the least bad’ of the possible meat options.

Chicken has become the meat department’s crowd-pleaser. Along with low procurement costs, this has made it ubiquitous – takeaway chicken in sandwiches and salads; chicken every which way in supermarket ready meals; and endless deep-fried fast food chicken parlours.

The supposed virtuosity of chicken draws plausibility from its colour, its very paleness. Red meat connects us psychologically to blood and death, while ‘white meat’ can be more easily disassociated from it. Diverse populations outside the Anglosphere accept the slaughter of animals by humans as an integral part of the natural food production systems that have sustained them for millennia.

The more industrialised and prosperous we have become, the more we are disconnected from farming and nature, and a modern distaste for red meat has become common. To the queasy Brit, already prone to anthropomorphising animals, a chicken smacks less of the abattoir than meat that is ‘red in tooth and claw’.

‘Eco-modernists’, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, tech-driven trans-humanists and assorted laptop activists, work hard to shut down global animal farming, evoking the very worst case production scenarios they can find. Commonly, they whip up sentiment against livestock farmers using arguments based on farm size, production methods and consumption patterns in places – usually the US – that are unrepresentative of most practice in the UK and Europe. While doing so, they typically demonstrate a failure to grasp the complex interactions between soil, plants, animals and people that form the basis of truly healthy, sustainable food and farming systems.

But given how deeply embedded chicken is in the traditional culinary habits and food security of cultures around the world, the goal of eventually terminating its consumption looks doomed.

The anti-red meat critique does have consequences in that it impacts the livelihoods of farmers, and very possibly undermines the nutritional health of the nation by directing us away from this nutrient-dense food that is perfectly suited to the UK’s ample grassland. But people who have fewer choices about what they can afford to buy, will inevitably rely on chicken as a staple because its cost is seemingly so low. Of course, what’s not reflected in checkout prices are the hidden costs to the consumer of our industrial food system because of the damage it does to our health and environment. These costs eventually end up being paid for by the public in the form of taxation to redress environmental harm or lost income owing to health issues.

To effectively address the profound animal welfare and environmental problems associated with intensive chicken systems, we need to work on getting people to eat chicken raised with the highest standards of welfare from agroecological farming systems.

Harvey Ussery, pioneer farmer and author of the newly-updated seminal manual, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, has set out what he calls “an all-natural approach” to raising chickens for home and market growers. He has spent his life developing a truly viable poultry model that sequesters carbon and is hygienic, neighbour-friendly and food-secure; like him, many smaller-scale poultry producers and farmers throughout the UK have developed agroecological chicken systems that work for them.

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) is trying to get supermarket chains on board with its Better Chicken Commitment, but, so far, the reaction from different retailers has been mixed. However, as CIWF has contested, “Without a change of breed – away from fast-growing birds that suffer a variety of unacceptable health and welfare issues – the systems adopted by the Coop and Sainsbury’s simply cannot be considered higher welfare.”

A cynic might observe that while large retailers like to boast in the vaguest of terms about ‘better’ chicken, they routinely pass on the financial burden for the additional costs of improvements in all their products to their suppliers.

And as Harvey Ussery makes clear, when we consider how to rear chickens in a way that produces flavoursome meat, from a content bird, in a manner that does not harm the environment (and even helps it), it boils down to keeping birds in conditions that “more closely emulate the ecology in which they evolved”.

Such a shift in raising chickens won’t be instigated within the supermarket system because the big retailers are only interested in large consignments of birds from a handful of companies. But the change is already coming from farmers with smaller flocks, independent butchers and the people behind market stalls, who focus on a more localised chicken food chain. Examples of good practice are already flourishing in organic and agroecological enterprises.

And like my monthly purchase, a chicken from such a system won’t be cheap. But it can still be rewarding to farm, a special pleasure to eat and, when we use every possible part of it, really good value for money.

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A game of chicken

Alice Frost — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 13:40:17 +0000

Chris Smaje is a social scientist and small-scale farmer and grower who writes widely about what he calls ‘low-energy localism’. His first book A Small Farm Future argues for the importance of locally self-reliant, agrarian communities and agroecological food production. Here, we share an extract from his second book, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2023), in which he challenges writer and Guardian columnist George Monbiot’s vision of an industrially manufactured food future and calls it out as a ‘game of chicken’.

A Game of Chicken

On mixed farms with the right stocking densities, chickens and pigs are wonderful waste recyclers whose own wastes are a boon and not a disposal burden. In concentrated feeding operations they’re wasteful consumers of precious arable crops, which could instead feed people directly with much greater efficiency. They’re also incubators of flu and related diseases, threatening humans with pandemics far less likely to spread from local mixed farming.[1] Their wastes from these operations are major pollutants. Their quality of life is poor. And while the numbers of cattle and sheep in aggregate have increased by less than 50 per cent in the past sixty years, pig numbers have increased by a factor of 2.3 and chickens more than eightfold (for reference, human numbers have increased by a factor of 2.6 over that period).[2]

Rangeland ruminants cycle otherwise inaccessible nutrition into the human food web and, worldwide, many are in the hands of third-agriculture local agrarians operating outside commodified market routes. Yet they seem to attract a lot more opprobrium than feedlot chickens and pigs through misleading claims about their supposed ‘inefficiency’. A suspicion arises about exactly who’s pressing this anti-pastoralist narrative and why. Monbiot is no fan of feedlots, but I daresay that badly evidenced articles with titles like ‘The Most Damaging Farm Products? Organic, Pasture-Fed Beef and Lamb’ play pretty well in agribusiness boardrooms.[3] There’s a naïve irresponsibility here that’s hard to fathom.

Perhaps the best that can be said about chicken feedlots is that they’re the easiest way of producing meat worldwide in the kind of bulk that would be required if people in the Global South aspired to eat it in the quantities familiar in the Global North – and why shouldn’t they? The five countries that have increased their chicken flocks the most over the last sixty years are Brazil, Pakistan, Indonesia, China and – way out in front – the US (there’s always the exception that proves the rule, and the exception is usually the US). The growth of soy production in biodiversity hotspots is intimately bound up with this trend.

To me, this is (literally) a game of chicken. Who’s going to call out the fact that, globally, we cannot keep growing production to meet the demand for meat along with endless other products so that the Global Standard Consumer can experience the kind of consumption patterns taken for granted in the Global North? Who’s going to call out the fact that we cannot, either, techno-fix our way out of such problems with energetically extravagant wheezes like meat-mimicking manufactured food? As the dysfunctions of fossil-fuelled global economic growth and commoditized food chains increasingly bear down on us, it seems to me that the people who jump first and start charting a radically different path are the braver ones.

Monbiot’s case for manufactured meat substitutes is built on the correct idea that increased prosperity drives consumer demand to replace plant-based sources of protein like beans with a tastier, and socially higher-status, source (meat) that Earth systems can’t support if it’s generalised across the whole human population. But his case is also built on the questionable idea that consumers will happily embrace meat substitutes if they look and taste like meat, rather than continuing to demand the higher-status, authentic, luxury product precisely because it’s a higher-status, authentic, luxury product. The fact that you can drive a Ford Fiesta doesn’t mean that nobody wants to drive a Bugatti Veyron. The larger problem is in continuing to make mass consumerism the arena of human status consciousness.

There will probably always be a demand for real meat, and the more it becomes a scarce luxury product the greater the social status likely to accrue to those with the means to get hold of it. The greater, too, the incentive for producers to widen its availability within the existing structures of consumer capitalist society by lowering its price – wherein lie the origins of feedlot meat production. Who’s going to be brave enough to acknowledge that unless we redress the extremes of economic inequality and create a different model of society, unless we learn to love a lot of grains and vegetables, with a generous side helping of dairy, just a little bit of meat, and almost no fossil fuels, then – a bit like Dr Seuss’s sneetches – we’ll status emulate our way to ruin?

[1] Wallace, 2016; [2] FAOSTAT; [3] Monbiot, George (2022) ‘The Most Damaging Farm Products? Organic, Pasture-Fed Beef and Lamb’, Guardian, 16 August, cf. Sustainable Food Trust (2022) ‘More Extreme Claims from George Monbiot: The Sustainable Food Trust Responds’, SFT, 2 September.

Use discount code SF30 to receive 30% off Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future until Monday, 31st July. Available to purchase here.

This extract has been reproduced with kind permission from the publisher, Chelsea Green.

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The egg and the chicken

Alice Frost — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 11:20:13 +0000

As a symbol of birth and renewal, eggs have long been associated with Easter and the arrival of Spring. This year, for less celebratory reasons, issues with eggs and, more broadly, with chickens are at the forefront of many a mind.

For starters, there’s been a crisis in the supply of eggs, a storm that’s been brewing for some time, driven by a confluence of ills: the continuing impact of bird flu, the inevitably increasing price of wheat – a staple in chicken feed – and the reluctance of retailers to pay farmers more, as their costs climb ever higher.

Sadly, bird flu has meant the return of housed chickens, likely to continue in winter months for some years. This year, starting in November, any flock of 50 or more chickens, organic or otherwise, were kept indoors. However, while this was necessary, it’s important to realise that most ‘free range’ chickens – which are most chickens – don’t get a lot of time outside anyway. The sole exception is for chickens raised to certified organic standards.

This tends to come as a surprise to many people. ‘Free range’ was supposed to mean just that – that chickens could range in pastures, enjoying the great outdoors. However, chicken accommodation varies widely as does the ‘enrichment’ element – and while there is a Code of Practice for pullets and laying hens, it is not a requirement by law. Many chickens are actively afraid of more dominant ones and this can deter them from accessing the ‘popholes’ which offer exit to the outdoors, with the number of popholes varying widely, from ample to minimal. And we should also remember that the ‘pecking order’ can be brutal, so in most free range flocks, beak trimming is a given, which is distressing to chickens, as one could imagine. It’s not their ‘best life’ – given the beautiful nutritious eggs and meat they produce for human consumption, they really deserve better.

Sixty years ago, eating chicken was a luxury of Sunday lunch and not a staple, but over the decades, as chicken was increasingly industrialised, the life of a chicken has shortened significantly (8 weeks is the norm for a conventional free range broiler) and on the caged (which still makes up 35% of chickens), barn raised and free range end of production, there is still much more that could be done to improve their lives. Conventional broiler chickens are genetically bred to grow at a rate much faster than their bodies can really manage, and the quick weight gain can leave them lame and subject to heart attacks. Slower growing breeds are better in terms of animal welfare.

Brits currently eat just over a billion chickens a year, and with the ubiquity of chicken, its value has fallen along with its welfare. Chicken is remarkably cheap and though there are many people who genuinely can’t afford to eat higher welfare chickens, there are many more that can. So, if you can reach a little deeper into your wallet, you’ll be doing a very good thing.

Just 3% of chickens are raised to certified organic standards. Comparatively, they are the lucky ones whose lives are most closely aligned with their needs and predilections. Organic layers and broiler chickens also aren’t given prophylactic antibiotics and GM feed. Flocks are capped out at 3,000 birds and it is good practice to divide large flocks into smaller groups. The RSPCA suggests 16,000 birds as a maximum flock size for free range, and caged and barn raised can be as many as 100,000 – have a think about the life of chicken in a flock of that many birds.

Perhaps it’s time to think differently about chickens and all that they provide for us and treat them better? Step up to organic standards – it’s often the same or even sometimes cheaper than free range and the difference to their welfare is actually immense.

The ‘Feeding Britain from the Ground Up’ report recommends a 74% and 48% reduction in our consumption of chicken and eggs respectively. Find out why and read more about the report’s recommendations here.

Infographic courtesy of Riverford Organic Farmers.

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Talking giblets: Animal welfare and the Christmas turkey

Imogen Crossland — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 16:12:00 +0000

As we get ready for Christmas the question most of us are asking is, what are we going to eat for Christmas dinner? Many of us have established family traditions and eat the same thing every year. Some have duck or goose, others prefer ham or lamb, but most of us eat turkey. It’s a great choice if you’re feeding lots of people, and there are usually leftovers for a delicious turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce on Boxing Day.

Every year some 16 million turkeys are slaughtered in the United Kingdom, 10 million of which are eaten at Christmas. For all but a small number of organic and free-range turkeys, their short lives are pretty miserable – confined to a shockingly small space with little or no access to the outdoors, often kept in the dark for the entirety of their lives, trucked sometimes hundreds of miles in crates, and summarily killed for our celebratory consumption. There is no getting around the hard facts behind our festivities. So spare a thought for your bird: buy well and make sure you get the giblets.

To help you do this, we’ve tried to map out what you get for your money in terms of animal welfare, tasty breeds and what might or might not be done to your bird in the processing. Turkeys are very definitely not much of a muchness. They vary a lot in flavour, texture and juiciness and the difference can definitely be tasted. They also vary a lot in terms of what you might be getting in your meat with regards to chemicals, water, flavouring, GMOs, residual antibiotics and growth promoters.

What animal welfare standards are you buying into?

Certified organic British turkey

Organic turkey is definitely the way to go if you can afford it. Vote for a better life for your bird and it should deliver on taste as well. To carry the word ‘organic’ on its label, it must be certified and adhere to the best animal welfare standards. Organic turkeys will likely be slow maturing (so they will live about twice as long as conventional birds) and spend their days doing what is natural to them – scratching around fields in the open air. They will have more space than either free-range or conventional birds when they are bedded up for the night. They won’t be on GM feed or given growth promoters, and antibiotics will only be given only if a bird is actually ill.

Also, make sure your organic turkey is British, especially if you are buying it from a supermarket – there is no sense in buying from abroad when there are so many good organic producers here in the United Kingdom. Many are small-scale and artisanal, which means your turkey is often getting special attention. It will likely be ‘hung’ (more on that below); it may be dry plucked by hand with careful attention to the finish on the skin; and it may be fed a special mix of grains. Eversfield Organic, a 450-acre mixed organic farm in Devon, ensures their birds forage and eat acorns as well as a grain mix that is grown on the same farm.

‘Free-range’

Most of us think that ‘free-range’ is a good alternative to buying fully organic birds, but beware! Free-range is a wide designation and minimum standards are pretty low. Free-range only means that the birds have ‘access to the outdoors’ – something that is not as straightforward as it sounds. Many free-range turkeys may never go outside – as naturally nervous, timid creatures, negotiating their way past other dominant turkeys through a single door often proves too much for many. And what’s on the other side is rarely green pasture. There are no restrictions on free-range birds being given GM feed or preventative antibiotics and the birds’ beaks can be ‘trimmed’, which effectively means cut-off. Free-range can be almost as industrial as conventional production.

However, not all free-range production is at the industrial end. There are many smaller-scale producers of free-range birds that do offer meaningfully higher welfare standards. Walter’s Turkeys, for example, which supply Riverford with their organic turkeys, also raises free-range birds that spend their days outside, are not fed on GM feed, and are only given antibiotics when sick. They also carry a ‘traditional speciality guarantee’ designation, which means they are hung, dry plucked and have the giblets included.

If you are buying a free-range bird, you should talk to your farmer or butcher and know exactly what you are getting. Find out about the scale of the operation, how the birds live, what they eat and how the turkeys are processed.

Conventional

Buying a conventional turkey from the supermarket is certainly the cheapest option, but we’d really recommend you don’t! The life of a battery turkey is much like the life of battery chicken and minimum standards are very basic, making for a short, stressful life in a very small space. Conventional turkeys are bred to produce a huge amount of breast meat, which makes them top heavy. As they come to slaughter they can often hardly move and develop leg problems (they cannot breed naturally either). They also have their beaks clipped to prevent pecking and they are never allowed to see the light of day or, indeed, any light at all – they are often kept in darkened sheds to prevent spooking which can be a problem. Animal welfare aside, conventional turkeys are heavily treated with antibiotics (it’s in their drinking water) and may be infused with flavour enhancers and water. Yum.

A couple of other things to think about

Breeds

There is more variety these days in the breeds available. The traditional white turkey that dominates conventional production has been bred for size rather than taste – like a supermarket tomato. Since breast meat is the most popular (witness the market for turkey ‘crowns’), these birds have become so top heavy they cannot fly or breed naturally. In the last decade, however, heritage breeds, such as Norfolk Blacks and Bronzes, have become more popular. Norfolk Blacks are slow maturing and therefore have a more developed flavour and meatier texture.

You may also come across the term ‘wild turkeys’. This term is not regulated and it is not a breed, as some people think. It implies that the birds are fully free-range, allowed to roam where they want. But if you come across the term, don’t take it at face value – find out what the producer means if you can.

Dry pluck versus wet pluck

Most poultry is wet plucked, even in organic systems. It means that after slaughter the bird goes into a bath of simmering water to make the feathers easier to remove. However, the presence of water can spread campylobacter and other bacteria, so it is arguably less hygienic. A dry pluck is where no water is involved and the feathers are waxed off. Some producers feel this improves the quality of the skin.

Hanging

Most higher end producers hang turkeys whole with the innards intact for around 10 days. As with other meat, this enhances the flavour, texture and moisture. This can make a big difference to taste.

Where are the giblets?

Search the web for giblets and the question comes up again and again: where are they? When we asked one turkey producer, he said that rigorous food safety standards means even more paperwork for the giblets. But offal generally, as Tessa Tricks points out, has become a waste product for most of us and we don’t know what to do with it. But our advice is make sure you get those giblets. Good gravy is what turkey is all about, and without the giblets there’s no gravy.

Whichever bird you choose for your Christmas table, it is worth remembering that the Christmas meal signifies the coming together of our communities to celebrate and share food between us. Historically the biggest, most delicious and prized birds, were carefully nurtured, fattened up slowly to make them prized for the Christmas feast. In a season when we are encouraged to think more about giving, generosity and caring, it is worth asking ourselves whether or not the bird on our table reflects these values. Try and choose a bird that has lived the best possible life for the budget you have available, and indulge in your Christmas dinner without the nasty after-taste of animal suffering on your conscience.

First published 12 December 2014

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We need to talk about chicken: New report highlights the problems with intensive chicken production

Anna Kilcooley — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 11:21:00 +0000

A new report from the Eating Better alliance has highlighted the massive, but often hidden, costs associated with eating intensively produced chicken in the UK.

The report, titled We Need to Talk About Chicken shows that poultry overtook red meat sales for the first time in 2017 and now accounts for over 50% of meat consumption. In the UK, 850 million chickens are reared for meat, and concerningly, 95% of these are in intensive indoor units, which are associated with poor animal welfare and major environmental impacts.

Patrick Holden, SFT Chief Executive, said, “The Sustainable Food Trust strongly welcomes the Eating Better alliance’s new publication. The report provides important and accessible new information to the millions of consumers who are currently confused in relation to differentiating between sustainable and unsustainable livestock production systems.”

Chicken has often been touted as a healthy and sustainable meat, but it has serious trade-offs that are multiplied many times due to the vast amount of chicken produced. Our growing appetite for chicken accelerates climate change through deforestation in order to supply huge amounts of soya, a major part of the modern-day chicken’s diet.

The UK imports around 3 million tonnes of soya annually. It is estimated that up to 60% of soya is used by the poultry industry. Its production is a major driver of deforestation and land-use change in South America. Over half of the soya used to feed poultry in the UK is not certified deforestation-free.

The report also highlights other, often hidden, costs of modern chicken production for consumers, farmers, the environment and animals. For instance, over 27% of UK chickens suffer from levels of lameness that are likely to be painful, while chicken meat now has fewer essential nutrients and higher levels of fat as a result of the shift to intensive production methods.

Simon Billing, Executive Director, of Eating Better has said, “Now feels like a crossroads for UK agriculture alongside the climate and biodiversity crises. We need to call out that further growth of chicken production is not a health or sustainability solution. There is a need to support nature friendly farming, with less and better meat, that restores our soils, regenerates nature and provides good rural jobs.”

You can learn more about the major problems associated with intensive chicken production on the SFT website with these articles by Zoe Neilson here and here, as well as this short film which illustrates the need for true cost accounting through the example of different systems of chicken production.

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A tale of two chickens

Anna Kilcooley — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:10:00 +0000

Debuting at The True Cost of American Food Conference last week in San Francisco, A Tale of Two Chickens is a short film which illustrates how we are paying a high price for food in hidden ways and why we need true cost accounting in our food and farming systems.

While the shelf price of intensively produced chicken is now cheaper, pound for pound, than bread, this film shows that the hidden costs are far greater.

Created with the Lexicon of Food, the Sustainable Food Trust hopes this film will help people to visualise the problem of food system externalities by comparing the stories of two chickens from two different production systems. One chicken, reared on pasture and organically grown feed, has minimal external impacts and in fact can generate actual benefits. While the other chicken, produced in a factory farm, is associated with many negative impacts which create hidden costs, such as the spread of antibiotic resistance, poor working conditions for staff and the pollution of air, soil and water.

But these hidden costs are not paid by the producer, they are paid by taxpayers and society as a whole. When we buy a cheap chicken we actually pay for it twice, once at the checkout and again through taxes that go towards the subsequent environmental and health care costs. When you add up all these hidden costs, cheaper chicken is not so cheap after all.

But what can we do? The film highlights 6 things that can be done to change this destructive system.

Buy sustainably produced food
Ensure there is access to good food for all
Tax fertiliser and pesticides to discourage their overuse
Incentivise people to eat better
Support local businesses
Treat workers fairly

By calling for these changes, we hope to see a shift towards the creation of a food system that is better for people and the planet.

The message of food’s hidden costs applies to almost all foods and needs to be spread, so please join us in telling people the tale of two chickens.

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The case of the exploded Dutch chickens

Anna Kilcooley — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 15:36:00 +0000

In December 2015, Holland’s three biggest supermarkets, Albert Heijn, Jumbo and Lidl, raised a white flag and announced they were going plofkip-free. Plofkip, directly translated, means exploded chicken. But before imaginations run wild, with ideas of dynamite and flying feathers, an explanation: plofkip became the Dutch byword for the fastest growing breeds of meat chickens. Typically Ross or Cobbs, they live just 42 days, in which time they reach a slaughter weight of at least two kilograms. Their unnaturally speedy growth, at which they ‘blow up’ by at least 50 grams a day, earned them their graphic nickname.

The supermarkets’ decision to stop selling this meat has meant that in one fell swoop, the amount of this type of chicken on Dutch shelves has been cut in half. The tale of the infamous plofkip is one of changing hearts and minds, and of a furious campaign from one animal welfare group: Wakker Dier.

The Netherlands is the most chicken-dense nation in the world. In a country that punches well above its weight in terms of intensive agriculture and food production, there’s an average of 47 million broiler chickens alive at any given moment. In the region of Venray, they outnumber people 86 to one. In 2014, 552 million broiler chickens were slaughtered, more than a half a billion, around 65% to 70% of which were exported. Though the majority of the Netherlands’ chicken goes out the country, the Dutch do have a robust appetite for it, with the average person eating 18.4 kilograms a year in 2014. Around 90-95% of that chicken came from the fastest growing breeds – plofkips, in other words.

In 2001, Wouter Klootwijk, an investigative journalist who explores and exposes the food industry, dedicated an episode of his television show, Keuringsdienst van Waarde, to the realities of the country’s intensive poultry industry. He coined the term ‘plofkip’, but it was to remain dormant – along with, to a large extent, the issue of factory farmed chicken – until 2012.

In 2012 Wakker Dier, an independent animal welfare organisation with a staff of just nine, kicked off a furiously bold campaign to improve the lives of the Netherlands’ meat chickens. What was the strategy? “To name and shame supermarkets”, says campaign leader spokesperson Hanneke van Ormondt, “and to keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that, for years in a row. And just repeat and repeat, until they surrendered.”

Their motto is ‘minder maar beter vlees’, ‘less meat, better meat’, their goal to reduce meat consumption in the Netherlands by 25% before 2030, and to ensure that all meat sold in shops bears a minimum of one beter leven (better life) star by then. (The beter leven star system is devised by Dierenbescherming, the Dutch equivalent of the RSPCA.)

Before targeting the retailers Wakker Dier had to reach the public, raise consciousness, and reveal the reality behind the cheap chicken on supermarket shelves, and on plates at home. They began a television, radio and billboard campaign that to date has cost two million Euros, stating the facts behind the production of factory farmed chicken and showing what it lookedlike. Recognising the power of a label, the campaigners borrowed from Wouter Klootwijk‘s wordbook, and branded it ‘plofkip’.

The crucial characteristic of the plofkip was its short lifespan, it was bred to grow from a 50g chick to a 2kg chicken in just six weeks, “the equivalent of a four year old who weighs eighty kilos”, says van Ormondt. Another key characteristic was living conditions; plofkips get packed into barns in their tens of thousands – around twenty chickens per square metre – where they spend the entirety of their lives, with no natural air or light, never to go outside. Plofkip bought in a supermarket might well have suffered from health issues. Respiratory illness and eye problems from dusty, warm ammonia-polluted air are very common, as are breast lesions and hock burns, the result of sitting in unchanged, soiled litter for six weeks. The plofkip’s accelerated growth, particularly in the chest area, commonly leads to cardiac issues or immobility. And a plofkip would typically have been a lifelong recipient of the equivalent of three daily doses of antibiotics in their feed or drinking water.

Familiarising consumers with the facts takes time, and herein lies the power of the catchy and ghoulish ‘plofkip’ label. “You don’t have to explain anymore, you just show the chicken and say the name, and everyone knows it’s bad”, says van Ormondt.

The moment plofkip became the catchall term for the worst of poultry factory farming came just three months into Wakker Dier’s campaign, when corporate giant Unilever announced it was eliminating meat from the fastest growing chickens across its range of products. Considerable media interest ensued. Journalists and commentators latched onto the handy and evocative term, and it entered the Dutch popular consciousness. Wakker Dier rode this wave of momentum, relentlessly broadcasting adverts naming and shaming the supermarkets.

One television advert begins with packets of chicken sliding along a supermarket checkout, it pans out to show the four major supermarkets’ chicken in its branded packaging, before the fillets and thighs of meat begin slithering out, amalgamating into one macabre lump of chicken-shaped flesh, that cuts to an image of a wretched plofkip keeled over in a dark barn. A voice says: “stop the plofkip at Albert Heijn and Jumbo”.

Print adverts likewise eschewed subtlety, showing the branded packaging again, a big arrow pointing to it saying PLOFKIP. Wakker Dier exclusively targeted the supermarkets. Did they ever go down the governmental lobbying route? “No”, says van Ormondt, “because that’s no use”.

In the face of relentless public humiliation, the supermarkets came together in 2013 and committed to making some advances on the chicken front by 2020. Vague terms like ‘the new chicken’, and ‘the chicken of tomorrow’ were banded about, but the proposed changes were minor: the birds would live a few days longer, get a handful of straw and a smartphone’s-worth more living space. With a flair for words that characterised their campaign, Wakker Dier dismissed it as ‘flopkip’.

They continued their tenacious campaign and the tipping point came in December 2015, with the big news that Albert Heijn, Jumbo and Lidl were to go plofkip-free within the year.

“From now on, we will no longer sell the regular fast-growing chicken,” reads a statement from Albert Heijn, the Dutch equivalent to Tesco, “the ‘new chicken’ comes from a special slow-growing breed, which is stronger and healthier, thus improving the quality of life of all chickens bred for meat sold at Albert Heijn.” The big difference comes down to breed. Birds like Hubbards and Rowan Rangers who live slightly longer will replace the Cobbs and Ross’, their slower growth puts less pressure on their health, therefore reducing reliance on routine antibiotics. Plus, the supermarkets have committed to simulating a day/night rhythm in their barns.

However, these chickens will still fall short of attaining the ‘better life’ star Wakker Dier aim for, which stipulates that chickens must live a minimum of 56 days, that a maximum of twelve birds (25 kilograms) are kept per square metre, and that there is natural light and some outdoor access. So is it a victory for Wakker Dier, or is it a half measure and some good PR for the retailers? “It is a very big breakthrough”, says van Ormondt, “on the larger scale it’s the first to be made in the last thirty years. The last thirty years have just been about making the chicken cheaper and cheaper, and now they’re making it more expensive. And for them it’s scary, to see if the consumer will still buy it. And now almost half the chicken consumption in the Netherlands is plofkip free, in one step.”

Though Wakker Dier gives the retailers kudos for making the change, they’re not the types to let the supermarkets off the hook too easily. The campaigners kept an eye on them and quickly realised that Lidl’s declarations were somewhat disingenuous. The German supermarket had continued using plofkip breeds, only feeding them less for slower growth.With zero tolerance for such tactics, Wakker Dier mercilessly ousted Lidl – and put them straight back on the target list.

And though the campaign group has spearheaded an unparalleled breakthrough in the fight against factory farmed chicken, they’re not going to rest on their laurels. In 2016 they will retrain their laser focus, this time targeting restaurants and fast food chains. After a year of naming and shaming the hospitality industry, they’ll be back on the backs of the supermarkets, campaigning for a ‘better life star’ for all chicken. Wakker Dier, it seems, won’t stop until it rids Holland of its exploded chickens.

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