Free-range claims fail to stack up
Without a certification system for chicken meat, many consumers are left baffled.
If you think you’re sitting down to a meal of free-range chicken tonight, think again. Since there is no certification system for free range, and no-one audits whether chickens actually do roam outdoors, companies can say what they like.
And they do. The major players – Tegel, Inghams, Brinks and Turks – all promote some of their chickens as being free range, and in fact Tegel boasts free range chooks make up almost 25 per cent of the 58 million it raises a year.
That is not to say some chickens on some of these farms do not range freely – or appear to based on promotional videos on the companies’ websites.
But a major report written last year for Agriculture Victoria looked at more than 400 scientific papers on the broiler industry, and showed on average 31 per cent of so-called free-range chickens never left the shed.
Among the reasons why: They became so top heavy they cannot move easily; and the density of chickens is so great that they find it difficult to find the outside.
It’s an issue that is not confined to New Zealand – around the world consumers have to grapple with whether to believe free-range claims made by companies.
Food scientists worry that consumers are baffled by the claims. They say that while some of the brands look after the welfare of their animals, others are meeting very minimal standards and probably not looking after the animals in the way a lot of consumers expect them to be doing.
‘‘Organic’’ chickens on the other hand must meet stringent criteria, and companies which claim to be organic are regularly audited.
A farm falsely claiming it is free range will probably not get into trouble, but a farm falsely claiming organic certification could face major fines.
Bostock Brothers in Hawke’s Bay is the only commercial organic producer in the country. It raises just 0.14 per cent of chickens nationwide, which is minuscule in relation to the remainder of the industry.
(The Poultry Industry Association estimates
120 million chickens will be raised next year.)
Ben Bostock, who runs the farm with his brother George, says the organic standard is the only chicken standard that limits flock size, requiring a maximum of 6000 birds per shed and more than a hectare of land for the chickens to roam.
The organic standard also limits the number of chickens per square metre to 21 kilograms per sqm, compared with the 38kg per sqm maximum stocking rate under the Government’s animal code of welfare for conventional free-range farms.
Conventional free-range farms can have anything between 30,000 and 40,0000 chickens per shed.
‘‘Unfortunately free range is a very loose term in New Zealand. Large-scale chicken producers can have over 30,000 chickens per shed and still claim they are free range,’’ Bostock says.
‘‘In our mobile chicken sheds, we have only 1500 chickens per shed and in our larger fixed sheds we have the organic standard of 6000.’’
Animal welfare group Safe’s campaign head, Marianne Macdonald, says the poultry industry does not have its own free-range certifications because it suits producers not to highlight the differences between welfare standards.
‘‘For example, industry bodies such as the Egg Producers Federation, the Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand and the Pork Board represent their entire industries, from battery and crate farmers to free-range producers,’’ she says.
‘‘They are not interested in introducing proper labelling systems that would show the different production methods used, as this would disadvantage their intensive producers.’’
Stocking rates are not the only issue. At present there are only two broiler breeds in New Zealand: the fast-growing cobb and ross varieties, which have been selectively bred for high meat production.
Bostock Brothers has been forced to use the cobb breed because until now it has not been able to import any others.
However, that is about to change. For the past four years the farm has been working with biosecurity officials to import from France the French-style, slow-growing chicken called Label Rouge. The first should be in stores next year.
In conventional farming, even if it is ‘‘free range’’, chickens are normally slaughtered at between five and six weeks.
Under the organic standard it is not permitted to process chickens under 42 days old.
Organic chickens must not be given antibiotics to increase growth and they are given lowerprotein feed to help slow growth.
SPCA chief scientific officer Dr Arnja Dales supports the creation of an official industry definition of free-range meat chickens. She says the 2012 code of welfare for meat chickens sets out fundamental obligations as minimum standards for both indoor-barn and free-range production systems, and best practice recommendations.
There are also a number of voluntary standards that companies can be accredited with, such as a lower stocking density. Inghams, for example, has received an SPCA Blue Tick certification for its Waitoa brand, which means it has met the SPCA’s free-range standard.
Free-range chicken comes at a cost to people’s wallets, though. In Countdown, free-range chicken breasts cost anything from $21.99/kg upwards, compared with $12.50/kg for regular chicken breasts.
When asked for comment, Inghams and Turks referred questions to the Poultry Industry Association, who state that freerange farms of major meat chicken firms are audited by ‘‘highly qualified companies such as AsureQuality, the SPCA, and QCon’’.
Tegel spokesman Liam Baldwin says free-range chickens are raised in large, modern, well-equipped barns.
‘‘The chickens have ready access to food and water at all times and the barns are carefully monitored to ensure optimum conditions are maintained.’’