A still from undercover footage taken of AD Harvey workers rounding up chickens into crates. People tend to see chicken as a clean meat. It’s low in fat, high in protein, the birds don’t burp methane like cows, and they require much less land.
A good choice for a healthy and sustainable diet, right? Wrong. Chicken has a dirty secret. Resolving the climate crisis does mean eating less and no beef, but sustainability is not just about reducing carbon.
That view completely ignores the ecological disaster happening in British rivers – a nightmare that Brits are blind to. A recent independent opinion poll organised as part of the Soil Association’s Stop Killing Our Rivers campaign found just 15% of people in the UK realise farming is the biggest polluter of rivers. Sewage, plastics, and litter are wreaking havoc in our waterways, and all need tackling.
But on average farming is the biggest culprit – and factory farmed chicken plays a huge role. The chicken industry is a leading cause of “dead zones” in the River Wye, which is approaching the point of ecological collapse despite being one of our most protected rivers. Here the muck from 20 million chickens living in the catchment has contributed to pollution that has killed crucial plants along at least 70 miles of the river.
And it’s not just the Wye at risk. The number of chickens being farmed for meat in England and Wales has risen by a whopping one million birds every month for the last decade, on average. Today.
