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Food companies recognised for better chicken commitments
The Good Chicken Award recognises companies that use or are committing to use (within five years) higher welfare chicken, by addressing the stocking density, breed and the need for environmental enrichment for broiler chickens.
To date over 253 million meat chickens are set to benefit each year from our award winners’ policies.
As of September 2017, we are also requiring companies to sign up to the longer term pledge contained in the 2026 European Chicken Commitment.
BACKGROUND
Worldwide chicken meat production and consumption is increasing: over 62 billion chickens are slaughtered annually for meat. This includes over 9 billion in China, around 9 billion in the USA, over 7 billion in the EU-28 and around 942 million in the UK.
The UK produces around 1.4 million tonnes of chicken meat annually and 35.4kg of chicken meat is consumed per capita, per annum.
Globally, over 70% of meat chickens (broilers) are raised in industrial farming systems, the large majority in North America, Europe, South America and a rapidly increasing proportion in developing countries, such as China, Brazil and Indonesia.
Minimum conditions for the protection of meat chickens are set out in the EU Directive (Council Directive 2007/43/EC) which addresses the stocking density of broiler chickens.
