Free range hens not so healthy?

Recent regulations mean chicken houses are no longer the tiny squalid cages they once were.

Recent regulations mean chicken houses are no longer the tiny squalid cages they once were.

Published Sep 10, 2014

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London - They are supposed to be healthier and happier – and produce tastier eggs.

But free-range chickens may not have it as good as we are led to believe, according to a leading vet.

Those allowed to roam free are in fact more likely to catch disease, get injured and die earlier than ones in cages, research has found.

Eggs from free-range hens now make up 45 percent of the British market – a huge increase from just one percent in 1980.

Supermarkets and celebrity chefs would have us believe that the birds lead more natural lives than battery hens.

But Barry Thorp of the Royal School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, says they live a life of peril. They are more at threat from disease and more likely to break their bones because they have not been bred to survive an outdoor life, he said.

Dr Thorp, speaking at the British Science Festival in Birmingham yesterday, said: “I think that for long-term sustainability, free-range systems do not work.”

He said free range “has some merits but it also has many problems as well”.

Dr Thorp said the message about the benefits of free range has been amplified by large retailers.

“Supermarkets love free range because they can make a bigger margin,” he said. He warned that the increase in the number of free-range chickens raises the risk of a major epidemic of bird flu – with the spread of disease between chickens in fields and ducks in nearby rivers a particular risk.

And he pointed out that recent regulations mean chicken houses are no longer the tiny squalid cages they once were.

Dr Victoria Sandilands, of Scotland’s Rural College, said free-range birds have a mortality rate of eight to 10 percent, far higher than caged hens’ death rate of two to four percent.

Mia Fernyhough, of the RSPCA, said free range has an “increased risk of mortality and increased risk of disease and injury” but if managed well it “has a much, much greater potential for higher welfare”. - Daily Mail

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