Perdue has plans to make chickens more comfortable

SEAFORD, Del. — Sunlight floods the floor at one end of the chicken house here at Ash-O-Ley Acres, and spry little Cornish game hens flap their wings and chase one another.

At the other end of the barn, where the windows are covered as part of a compare-and-contrast demonstration, the flock is largely somnolent and slow to move.

“This is my second flock with the sunlight,” said Karen Speake, whose family has raised chickens on this farm for Perdue Foods, the nation’s fourthlargest poultry producer, for almost four decades. “They’re much happier birds, I can tell you, more active, more playful.”

Over the next several years, all of Perdue’s chickens — 676 million last year — will bask in sunlight, part of an ambitious overhaul of the company’s animal welfare practices, which it will announce Monday. The commitment will hold Perdue to standards similar to those in Europe, which the U.S. poultry industry has long dismissed as antiquated, inefficient and costly.

Adding space

In addition to installing windows, the company plans to give its chickens more space in barns. It may tinker with breeding to decrease the speed at which birds grow or to reduce their breast size, steps that could decrease the number and severity of leg injuries, an issue that has brought unwanted attention to the company.

Also, Perdue will put its chickens to sleep before slaughter, a step taken several years ago by Bell & Evans, a smaller poultry company.

“We are going to go beyond what a chicken needs and give chickens what they want,” said Jim Perdue, whose grandfather founded the business in 1920.

The industry has long argued that such standards would raise costs to producers that eventually would be passed on to consumers.

But Perdue, which had $6 billion in sales last year and increased production more than 9 percent, is betting such concerns are overblown based on its experience so far.

Change the industry

The move also may have a sweeping effect on the industry, forcing competitors to adopt similar practices. When Perdue announced that it intended to use no antibiotics, many of its competitors followed suit at the demand of their big customers.

“It will change the way we do business in so many ways,” Perdue said.

Numerous surveys conducted by the dairy and meat industries suggest that people care and want to know about animal welfare. For that reason, Perdue said, the company plans to issue annual reports on its progress on the new standards.

“We want to be held accountable,” he said. “If we mess up, we have to be prepared to say we messed up.”

In late 2014, Compassion in World Farming, an animal rights group, released video taken at a barn under contract to Perdue that showed birds with raw, red chests from sitting too long on litter laden with ammonia and feces.

A few months earlier, Perdue agreed to stop using the phrase “humanely raised” from packages of its Harvestland brand of chicken to settle a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States.