Millions of supermarket chickens in the UK have skin burns from living in their own excrement
Millions of supermarket chickens in the UK have skin burns from living in their own excrement
A BBC investigation finds about one third of chickens sold in some UK supermarkets have "hock burn".
Edit: I would recommend checking out the original article just for the sake of seeing the pictures of what hock burn looks like on packaged chicken you would buy from the supermarket.
My TL;DR:
"Hock burn" is caused by ammonia from excrement. A sign of poorer welfare on farms, it can be seen on a third of birds in some supermarkets.
Hock burn is often associated with a high-stocking density of birds and is a result of prolonged contact to moist, dirty litter. It shows up on packaged and prepared meat as brown ulcers on the back of the leg.
Chicken with hock burn markings are still safe to eat. But the amount of hock burn within a poultry flock is an industry-accepted indicator of wider welfare standards on farms.
Red Tractor, the UK's biggest farm and food assurance scheme, sets a target rate for hock burn of no more than 15% of a flock.
Hock burn statistics from various supermarkets:
The BBC requested animal welfare data from 10 leading UK food sellers: Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Co-op, Lidl, Waitrose, Iceland and Ocado.
Five of the companies - Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Iceland and Ocado - failed to provide specific figures.
- Co-op, which is supplied with an estimated 30 million chickens a year, recorded hock burn in 36.7% of its poultry.
- Aldi's most recent annual figures revealed it had found hock burn in 33.5% of its chickens.
- Company animal welfare reports reveal Tesco recorded a 26.3% rate in its chickens in 2022/23.
- Sainsbury's found hock burn in one in five (25%) of its chickens.
- Waitrose had the lowest recorded annual figure of 2.7%.
- Lidl was one of the stores that did not provide data to the BBC. Volunteers found 74% of the chickens they checked had hock burn.
Just another benefit of the UK being finally free of all those oppressive EU regulations.
23Permanently Deleted
7
If you're an American wondering why the hell anyone would ever buy chicken with visible brown ulcers, don't worry. You might mistakenly assume that US chicken farmers treat their chickens better than UK farmers, because you would never see hock burn in a US supermarket. That doesn't mean our chickens don't get hock burn.
American consumers would never buy something so aesthetically unappealing, so those parts of the chicken are cut away and used for nuggets and the remaining meat is packaged as skinless cuts. Our chickens suffer just as much as their cousins across the pond.
22Oh that? That's just where the bird had painful rashes and lesions from being made to lie, stand, eat, sleep, breed, breathe, and die knee deep in shit. In shit. It's fine to eat.
21You can stop buying cheap meat today.
10Stop blaming individuals for corporations.
4It's simply not possible to even just somewhat ethically produce as much meat as we consume. As long as most people meant cheap meat daily, shit like this will happen. The individual is to blame here as much as corporations.
8
Can't afford to, mate
3Of course you can if you want to, there are many other things you can eat and you could also still eat meat occasionally but choose higher quality.
4
"Red Tractor" Chocolate fireguard
5Chickens aren't any more prone to salmonella than any other poultry, eg ducks. The reason chicken get salmonella and the reason you're expected to cook it thoroughly to kill off the bacteria is purely down to how chickens are reared and the appalling conditions.
4This is the best summary I could come up with:
Kate Parkes, poultry specialist at the RSPCA, told the BBC that hock burn was "a concerning health issue and, sadly, too common in many intensive farm settings".
She added that the risk of hock burn "is significantly higher when birds are poorly managed, genetically selected to grow very fast or reared in overcrowded conditions".
The British Poultry Council, which represents suppliers, processors and farmers, added that "drawing comparison between formal inspection and rigorous procedure versus a shop-shelf experiment has potential to mislead and misinform".
It added that where hock-marking does occur "it is used as an indicator to identify areas for improvement because ours is an industry that operates to science-based standards, prioritises investment in research and development, and keeps pace with innovation".
The BBC requested animal welfare data from 10 leading UK food sellers: Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Co-op, Lidl, Waitrose, Iceland and Ocado.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, said: "Our members take their responsibilities to animal welfare very seriously, and expect high standards, independently audited, from all of their suppliers.
The original article contains 1,101 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
-3Go ahead, eat that ham sandwich. You earned it. We evolved to eat meat after all, tight. Besides, one ham sandwich is not gonna save those animals. Eat it and forget about it.
-4