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At least 400,000 chickens are being culled in the UK as Covid-19 infections disrupt slaughterhouse routines. Approximately 300,000 birds will be culled in England and 110,000 have been culled in Scotland.
Chickens that cannot be slaughtered for food are often gassed with CO2 and their bodies turned into fat and other animal by-products. They do not enter the food chain.
The UK raises and slaughters around 20 million birds per week, according to the British Poultry Council (BPC). About 95% are chickens, and most are processed in a few large slaughterhouses, each with a capacity of about 2 million birds per week. Loss of production even in a large slaughterhouse can have significant impacts along the food chain and create welfare problems, the BPC said.
Millions of U.S. farm animals were euthanized on the farm earlier this summer after meat plants shut down due to coronavirus outbreaks among staff that reduced the country’s slaughter capacity for cows and pigs in 25% and 40% respectively.
In England, about half of the staff at Banham Poultry in Norfolk have had to isolate themselves after 75 staff members tested positive for coronavirus. The plant plans to “humanely euthanize 300,000 birds using a gas system,” its director, Blaine Van Rensburg, said in a statement.
When asked about the risk of more culls, Rensburg said: “Since we don’t know how long this current situation will last, we will not speculate on how many others will have to be humanely euthanized.”
Rensburg denied previous reports that Banham had culled some 7,000 birds. “To date no birds have been euthanized at our site,” he said. “We are already diverting a quarter of a million birds to other suppliers and will continue to do so whenever possible.”
In Scotland, a statement from the Coupar Angus poultry slaughterhouse, which is owned by 2 Sisters Food Group, confirmed that 110,000 birds had been slaughtered. The slaughterhouse kills “almost a million chickens a week and is the only facility of its kind in Scotland,” he said.
There are two standard methods for gas fired poultry disposal in the UK: whole house gassing and container gassing. The first is to fill the sheds where the hens live with CO2. The second is to place the birds in specialized containers that are taken to the farm. The containers are filled with CO2 and sometimes other gases like argon.
“Whole house culling is very rare, sheds are not designed for it,” said Penny Middleton, manager of poultry policy for the Scottish National Farmers Union. “The containerized option is more controllable and would be made by someone like Livetec Systems, an approved depopulator, in accordance with welfare regulations,” he said.
None of the interviewees would comment on how long it takes for gassed chickens to die apart from saying that it is legal and humane.
Coupar Angus’ statement said the chickens were “humanely shipped in accordance with the law” and that the slaughter was overseen by the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency and an independent veterinarian.
The statement said that while last week’s Covid-19-related decision to “cease production has brought many disturbing consequences,” it managed to “successfully process the vast majority of Scotland’s birds” by shipping them to other slaughterhouses in its British network. . The factory was due to reopen on Monday and no further sacrifices are expected, he said.
Middleton said the reopening of the Coupar Angus plant could take a while to reach full speed, but that he did not expect any more sacrifices in Scotland.
UK has ‘little capacity to sacrifice’
Peter Stevenson, a policy adviser at UK welfare organization Compassion in World Farming, said the sacrifices highlighted a failure of the food system. “Chickens today have been bred to grow so fast that if they are allowed to continue to grow after reaching slaughter weight, many will become so lame that they can barely walk, while others will die of heart disease.”
BPC Chief Executive Richard Griffiths said in a statement that because UK poultry processing was so efficient, with little capacity available, losing a large slaughterhouse “will not only disrupt our national food supply, It will create shortages and job losses at a time when it can least afford it, but it also results in challenges to bird welfare on a significant scale ”/
He said that the coronavirus outbreaks in meat plants demonstrated “that no amount of preparation and surveillance can guarantee complete protection against Covid-19. We have to prioritize the health of the people in our community, but we must also safeguard the food supply and the welfare of our animals. “
The BPC was working closely with the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) “and other relevant authorities to ensure that reasonable measures are taken to minimize welfare problems and maintain the food supply,” it said. “We must ensure that the poultry meat plants affected by a Covid-19 outbreak can maintain performance when possible, even if that means having basic staff on site.”
Defra did not confirm the number of chickens slaughtered, but said the birds “would be slaughtered with gas … in accordance with the rules on the protection of animal welfare at the time of slaughter.”
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