Our figures reveal animal-loving shoppers spend five times more on intensively reared chicken than higher welfare options.
In the UK, people spend £1.5 billion each year on intensively reared chicken compared to £281.9 million on higher welfare options:
- £4.5m on RSPCA Assured indoor
- £26.4m on organic
- £251m on free-range (including RSPCA Assured free-range).
This means the UK spends just over five times more on intensively reared chicken than higher welfare options.
The depressing figure comes despite 86 percent of the public saying they expect the supermarkets to ensure all the chicken they sell is farmed to higher welfare standards.
Ten years since celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver campaigned against retailers to improve poor chicken welfare through “Hugh’s Chicken Run” (2008) and “Fowl Dinners” (2008), we reveal that chicken welfare has improved little in the decade since.
Our campaign manager, Claire Williams, said:
Supermarkets were quick to promise better welfare for chickens but ten years later we have not made much meaningful progress and although shoppers believe they're buying higher welfare options our research shows that a vast majority of birds sold are intensively reared indoors.
Follow the link to read the article in full on the RSPCA website