How cheap chicken ran rampant across Britain

Growing appetite for poultry fuels farming that is blamed for contributing to pollution, as Daniel Woolfson discovers

The bucolic River Wye, which winds through the borderlands between Wales and England, has been painted by JMW Turner and provided inspiration for William Wordsworth. Yet waters once described as “rolling from their mountain-springs with a soft inland murmur” by the great English poet today look very different.

Algae blights the river, damaging biodiversity and causing a drop-off in species of wildlife. Natural England last year downgraded the status of the Wye, a protected river, from “unfavourable-improving” to “unfavourable-declining”.

The blame for the great waterway’s decline has been laid at the door of a perhaps unlikely culprit: Big Chicken.

A build-up of nitrogen and phosphorus from chicken manure, which is used as fertiliser in the area, is responsible for the changes in the river, campaigners claim. This manure is a by-product of a booming industry, amid a growing appetite for chicken.

Activists have now taken the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to court, claiming they have failed to protect the River Wye from damage from intensive chicken farming.

Chicken farms have skyrocketed. A decade ago, about 13m chickens were being reared. Today, it is 24m, roughly a quarter of the UK’s total population of chickens. “A major cause for this is the recent exponential growth of intensive poultry production within the catchment of the River Wye, which supplies millions of chickens a week to the nation’s leading supermarket retailer Tesco,” says River Action founder Charles Watson. Avara Foods, the Herefordshire-based company accused of contributing to environmental problems in part of the River Wye, is a major Tesco supplier.

The growth of chicken farming in the Wye valley and its surrounding areas coincides with a major expansion of Britain’s chicken industry over the past decade as chicken has become the country’s favourite meat. “Red meat got a kicking about diet and obesity,” says Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, founder of The Black Farmer, “so people went from the red meats to the white meat. White meat without the skin is seen to be healthier.” Roughly 18m to 20m chickens are slaughtered for their meat in Britain each week, ending up in Sunday roasts, deep-fried in chicken shops or as lean meat in everything from sandwiches to salads.

Yet this poultry boom has not been without consequence. A by-product is that one of Britain’s beloved waterways has been turned into “pea soup”, campaigners say. According to Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, around 73pc of pollution in the River Wye is linked to livestock manure, including chicken waste, while a further 22pc is blamed on sewage treatment works.

The boom is impacting housing too. Developers claim they face severe delays and added costs in part because of chicken farms. Under so-called “nutrient neutrality” rules, new developments cannot impact local ecosystems. Builders are having to invest into complicated abatement schemes to be able to build.

The chicken farming industry has become increasingly dominated by a handful of companies that have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on ramping up production to cater to Britain’s taste for poultry.

The best-known is 2 Sisters Food Group, run by billionaire Ranjit Boparan, nicknamed the Chicken King. The West Midlands-born tycoon’s company processes 10.4m birds every week across the UK and Europe.

Industry growth has sparked fears of a rise in US-style megafarms. A report from campaign group Compassion in World Farming this month warned of a 20pc rise in intensive livestock factories across the UK since 2016.

Campaigners say this risks damaging the UK’s reputation for high food standards and increases the likelihood of outbreaks of disease such as bird flu, which has run rife in the UK over recent years and led to the death of millions of birds.

“US-style mega farms were rare or barely a feature – now we’ve got thousands of them,” says Ruth Westcott, campaign coordinator at sustainable farming pressure group Sustain. “The more intensive livestock you have, the more of a risk those pandemics become.”

Farmers refute this, saying British facilities are “incomparable” to the US. A spokesman for the National Farmers Union said: “Poultry farmers adhere to strict standards. Farm size itself is never a measure of these standards.”

It is easy to paint the farmers as the villains of this story. Yet those working in the fields say it is supermarkets and the public who are to blame. “We’ve been heralded as the bad boys,” says Jo Hilditch, managing director of Whittern Farms in Herefordshire, which supplies Avara with chickens. “The bottom line is that if the public wants to buy chickens that aren’t polluting, it needs to be paid for.”

Westcott says pressure from supermarkets to keep prices down has encouraged more intensive farming. “My concern is that it’s the wrong people that are getting the flack.” .

The Chicken King himself has said the price of a bird has now become too cheap. “How can it be right that a whole chicken costs less than a pint of beer?” Boparan said in 2021.

His 2 Sisters lost £93m in 2022 before tax, while Avara made a loss of £21m in 2022. Both companies blamed inflation for their struggles.

Farmers admit the current system is unsustainable. Avara has vowed to stop selling manure to farmers in the Wye area and said it will contribute no excess phosphate to the Wye catchment area by the end of this year.

A spokesman said it recognises “the role phosphates play in the river’s deterioration” but added: “Without a concerted effort to address all sources of pollution, the health of the River Wye will continue to decline.”

An Environment Agency spokesman said: “Since 2021 more than 7,000 farm inspections have been carried out, with farmers required to take 11,400 improvement actions, including around the River Wye.”

Andrew Opie at the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said: “Food retailers source, and will continue to source, the vast majority of their food from the UK and know they need to pay a sustainable price to farmers. Given the pressure on British farmers at the moment, retailers are paying more for their produce. However, retailers are also facing additional costs and are working incredibly hard to bring down food price inflation at a time when many households are struggling to afford the essentials.”

Tesco said: “Protecting and maintaining water quality and biodiversity in our supply chains is critical for Tesco and our suppliers, and we’re committed to playing our part in protecting the River Wye.

“We’ve worked closely with local stakeholders since 2019 to fund some of the work of the Wye & Usk Foundation to tackle water pollution in the area, including tree planting, soil testing and implementing best practice on farms. We’re also providing multi-year funding for a number of water catchment projects.”

‘Red meat got a kicking about diet and obesity so people went to white meat, seen to be healthier’

‘Retailers are also facing additional costs and are working hard to cut food price inflation’