Supermarkets, Coop | Label Kiwi and Coop worst:

On Monday, Nettavisen wrote that Rema 1000 is criticized for promoting better animal welfare in Solvinge chicken and Solvinge eggs, while the Animal Welfare Alliance considers Solvinge “not animal-friendly.”

However, Coop and Norgesgruppen Live Kleveland, communications manager and founder of the Animal Welfare Alliance, criticize.

– Big responsibility

Kleveland says the Animal Welfare Alliance believes that Rema’s producer, Solvinge, has better welfare for chickens than competitors Kiwi and Coop’s.

– Solvinge is significantly better than the competition. It’s been a revolution in animal welfare, because they use a cooler breed, the Hubbard chicken, instead of Ross 308, which Coop and Norgesgruppen sell, he tells Nettavisen.

The Animal Welfare Alliance writes on its website that Ross 308 “is bred to grow abnormally fast, so fast that young chickens can have bone and heart problems as a result” and believes the breed should be eliminated.

Kleveland thinks it’s good that Coop sells Änglamark chicken and eggs organically, which gets him a green face from the Animal Welfare Alliance. The same applies to Kiwi, which among other things sells Hovelsrud chicken, which has a green face and the Animal Welfare label.

However, he believes that it is important to analyze what the food industry can contribute to increase animal welfare.

– Coop and Kiwi have a great responsibility to sell large quantities of Ross 308, and thus maintain the use of this unhealthy breed in Norway, he says.

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– Disrespectful

Harald Kristiansen, communications manager at Coop Norge, reacts to the criticism from Kleveland. He believes that animal welfare is complex and is about more than breed choice. They say they don’t know that there are good international studies on animal welfare parameters between different chicken hybrids.

– To portray the chicken Ross 308 as the worst, we think it’s a gross oversimplification. It is also disrespectful to farmers who take animal welfare seriously and work every day to make chickens feel good, he says.

– Good animal welfare is first and foremost about caring for animals properly. They need good care, a good chicken house environment and a breeder with good competence in welfare and operation, Kristiansen notes.

Both Coop and Kiwi insist to Nettavisen that they are concerned about animal welfare.

– The Norwegian group, of which Kiwi is a part, has a good dialogue with chicken suppliers when it comes to animal welfare, and we continually work on this, says Kristine Aakvaag Arvin, Kiwi communications manager.

She says that a possible replacement for the breed in standard Norwegian chicken production is a decision with major consequences for both producers and suppliers. Therefore, such a decision should be controlled by the poultry industry and chicken suppliers, in accordance with the current requirements and expectations of the Norwegian authorities / Norwegian Food Safety Authority, believe both the Kiwi owner and the Kiwi owner. , Norgesgruppen.

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Kine Søyland, communications manager for Norgesgruppen, also points out that they have other alternatives in addition to the Ross 308 chicken.

– In addition to standard chicken, our chains also offer products from smaller suppliers with chicken from slower growing breeds, including Hovelsrud, Gårdsand and Holte farms. These are large small-scale producers that offer good options, says Søyland.

– No need to change

Kristiansen in Coop says that everyone who delivers chicken to Coop participates in the Animal Welfare Program for broilers and the Quality System in Agriculture. This means that they ensure data and good control of each herd that is slaughtered, and that has given a significant boost to welfare.

– So far in 2020, our supplier can point to very good figures related to mortality and hatching percentage, at the same time that we do not use narasin in our production. Based on this, we currently don’t see a need for hybrid switching. Of course this may change, but our vendor considers the Ross 308 to be a sustainable hybrid that performs well, he says.

However, Coop sees that there may be potential for improvement and that they will continue to work to improve the well-being and health of the chickens. Änglamark Organic Chicken, which receives a Green Smiley face from the Animal Welfare Alliance, now makes up a small but growing volume of its chicken products.

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Søyland at Norgesgruppen also notes that there may be room for improvement. She notes that it is good that the Animal Welfare Alliance and others are concerned about the best possible animal welfare, and their contribution is also important to Norgesgruppen and our chains.

– Norgesgruppen maintains a good dialogue on animal welfare measures with our chicken suppliers, and we have experience that they work well with measures for continuous improvement of animal welfare in standard chicken production, he says.

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New egg production

As for egg production, they point to a new alternative.

– Coop and our supplier take animal welfare seriously, and recently launched free-range chickens, where the chickens are born in the henhouse where they are to be raised, thus avoiding transport to the henhouse, says Kristiansen.

They use the Ranger Gold breed.

– It is a slow-growing hybrid that lives 52 days, that is, longer than Hubbard, which lives about 46 days. Currently there are seven chicken coops that have farm-raised chickens, but the goal is to increase this proportion, he says.