By Tony Goodger, head of communications, AIMS
Prem Sikka, Emeritus Professor of Accounting posted on ‘X’, “KFC, Nando’s, Burger King and others ditch chicken welfare pledge. It is about profits. They prefer “franken-chickens” which mature quicker but have higher rates of premature death and muscle disease. Customers not told anything about chicken welfare”.
Whilst Matthew Melton, Corporate Relations Manager at The Humane League UK wrote on LinkedIn “For seven years, I have been told that “sector-wide collaboration” was impossible. Whenever I met with companies about the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), I was told that working together to raise standards was a commercial “no-go”.
But yesterday, that changed. A “cartel of cruelty” has formed”.
Strong stuff and they are of course entitled to air their views on whatever forum they wish.
Both, along with many others, are of course talking about the Sustainable Chicken Forum (SCF). This is as well researched, science led initiative, that provides for the continued supply of British chicken into foodservice and retail outlets at a time when the UK has opened the domestic market to large scale imports from countries whose production systems and levels of on farm and abattoir processing standards fall well beneath those here in the UK.
So let me clear on one key issue that has resulted in the move from BCC to SCF, planning permission.
Despite Professor Sikka’s view that this is “about profits”. I can assure him, it isn’t.
I am not sure was to whether an Emeritus Professor of Accounting, has spent much time looking at the balance sheets and P&L of the average farm but I can guarantee him that in most cases it doesn’t make for good reading.
What he and others are maybe missing is that there is a very real need for farmers to spread the risk of agriculture into wider production systems and, given the ever rising demand for animal based protein, there investment into their businesses of modern legally compliant poultry housing is an investment into demand side economics.
Poultry producers who have applied for planning in order to comply with demand for BCC birds have seen their applications stall and, in many cases, been refused which, unsurprisingly has resulted in them not being able to invest in new sheds.
Nobody wants to see poor animal welfare because this leads to poor returns and yes, Professor Sikka, loses not profits.
And, Mr Melton, this is not a “Cartel of Cruelty” the SCF is simply the result of what happens when the ill-informed are led by the ideological into mass disruption of the planning system.
I have asked Communities Against Factory Farming (CAFF) to provide me with an explanation as to what they hope to achieve from what is increasingly looking like a campaign based on bullying and intimidation. To date, no reply.
So, I have asked one of CAFF’s funders, a charity. They initially replied saying that their “…main work on this issue is around planning permission for large intensive production units, examined on climate grounds. We take a transparent, evidence-based and technical approach, and as far as I am aware do not support protests that might be described as nasty tactics”.
Naturally I have asked them for some further clarification and, unsurprisingly have received no reply.
The establishment of SCF should be welcomed by all, instead poultry sector are instead being accused of “welfare washing” by a few organisations who sail under the flag of convenience provided for them by the Charity Commission along with their legions of what on the evidence of the planning objections, are simply the spoon fed rantings of the chattering classes.