Millions of supermarket chickens show skin burns from living
in their own waste, a BBC investigation has found.
"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, data shows.
The BBC asked the 10 biggest UK chains about its presence on
their shelves. Co-op and Aldi reported the highest rates but five refused to
release data.
The British Retail Consortium said the issue was taken
"very seriously".
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 is 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.
A spokesperson for Co-op said that "every effort"
was made to minimise the occurrence of hock burn, also known as hock marking.
An Aldi spokesperson added it that it worked closely with
suppliers to "ensure continuous improvement in our food… products".
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".
While Lidl was one of the stores that did not provide data
to the BBC, it has been the focus of store spot checks by one animal welfare
campaign group, Open Cages.
It asked volunteers to check more than 500 whole chickens on
shelves at 22 Lidl stores in nine UK towns and cities between September and
November last year.
Connor Jackson, co-founder of the campaign group, said hock
burn was "one symptom of a much larger problem".
He added that many retailers "source chickens raised in
heavily-crowded sheds, bred for extremely rapid growth, and this is routinely
causing chickens immense suffering".
Lidl is now being urged to sign up to the Better Chicken
Commitment (BCC), a set of RSPCA-backed higher welfare standards for the
industry.
A spokesperson for Lidl said the total number of chicken
products that Open Cages said it had checked in its survey was a tiny
percentage of the fresh chicken it sold in that period.
He added: "The figures provided by Open Cages strongly
conflict with our own data, which is lower than industry figures publicly
available."
The company declined to share its actual hock burn figures
but said it had plans in place to publish a full and detailed animal welfare
report soon.
"We take animal welfare extremely seriously, and the
health of animals in our supply chain is closely monitored, with regular
independent audits carried out to ensure that expected standards are being
met," he said.
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.
Five of the companies - Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Iceland and
Ocado - failed to provide specific figures.
Of the remaining five, Co-op, which is supplied with an
estimated 30 million chickens a year, recorded hock burn in 36.7% of its
poultry.
A spokesperson for the company said: "We work with our
supplier to make every effort to minimise the occurrence of hock
markings."
She added that the company had this month moved to using
lower stocking density birds "which will have a significant positive
impact on the reduction of hock markings, amongst other welfare benefits".
Aldi's most recent annual figures revealed it had found hock
burn in 33.5% of its chickens.
An Aldi spokesperson said it recorded and published welfare
data to "ensure transparency".
"We take animal welfare extremely seriously and work
closely with our suppliers to ensure continuous improvement in our food and
non-food products."
