Four years of work has led to his moment. When we started this, we knew it would be big. A battle of David versus Goliath as we took the Government to court. But we also knew that it was the right thing to do, to fight for the millions of Frankenchickens that were suffering because of the way that they had been bred. And on Friday 13th December, we got the result we had been nervously waiting for.
Represented by Advocates for Animals, four years ago we started the process to take the Government to court, arguing that fast-growing chicken breeds, known as Frankenchickens, are illegal under current animal welfare laws.
After a loss, and an appeal, in October 2024 we entered the courts once more. And the judgment is now in on one of the most important legal cases for animals in history.
The judges have ruled in favour on our main argument - that the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will suffer because of how they have been bred. This is a huge moment for animals in the UK.
A billion Frankenchickens are raised with suffering coded into their DNA each year. They are bred to grow too big, too fast, to make the most profit possible. In light of this ruling, we believe that farmers are breaking the law if they continue to keep these chickens.
However, Defra, the Government department responsible for farming, has been let off the hook on a technicality. Because Defra has been silent on fast-growing breeds of chicken, the judges found they had no concrete policy that they could rule against. This means that our case has been dismissed and the judges have not ordered Defra to act.
It is clear: by not addressing this major animal welfare crisis, Defra has failed billions of animals - and the farming community. This must change.
While this ruling has failed to force the Government to act, it has confirmed our view that farmers are acting criminally by using fast-growing breeds. We will now explore bringing private prosecutions against mega-farms that use Frankenchickens.
The cruel use of Frankenchickens is possibly the biggest animal welfare crisis of our time. With your continued support, we will use this new ruling to do everything we can to bring it to an end.
Whilst I salute the effort and progress here, this post does seem rather full of spin, given that from what I can tell the court ruling was against the animal advocates. I'd rather see posts that present the facts more clearly.
Wow, yeah, I was quite misled by the lead. Can anyone give a more independent assessment of what this actually means legally?
The Humane League (THL) filed a lawsuit against the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the Defra Secretary) alleging that the Defra Secretary’s policy of permitting farmers to farm fast-growing chickens unlawfully violated paragraph 29 of Schedule 1 to the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007.
Paragraph 29 of Schedule 1 to the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007 states the following:
THL’s case was dismissed.
THL appealed the dismissal, and again THL’s case was dismissed (this most recent dismissal is what THL’s post is about).
In this most recent dismissal, the Court clarified the meaning of Paragraph 29 as follows:
Essentially, the Court ruled that Paragraph 29 is only violated if an animal is bred such that it cannot avoid genetically caused health/welfare problems even under perfect environmental conditions (i.e. giving the animal the best possible food/diet, a perfect living environment, and world class medical treatment). This allows farmers to continue to farm animals so long as their genetic issues can theoretically be mitigated by improving conditions, even if those conditions are unlikely to be implemented in practice.
For example, let’s say there is a genetically selected breed of chicken that under normal factory farming conditions grows so fast that their legs snap under their weight by the time they are a month old. Under the Court’s ruling, this would not violate Paragraph 29, so long as this problem (and other genetically caused problems) could theoretically be mitigated with better environmental conditions (i.e. giving the chicken the best possible food/diet, a perfect living environment, and world class medical treatment).
Since the Court offered this interpretation of Paragraph 29, all trial courts in the UK (except for those in Northern Ireland and Scotland) are now required to use this interpretation of Paragraph 29 when making rulings.
From our understanding, this is not a favorable interpretation of Paragraph 29, as it makes it extremely difficult to prove that a violation of Paragraph 29 has occurred. Under this ruling, the only way to prove that a Paragraph 29 violation has occurred is by proving the health/welfare problems encountered by an animal are completely unavoidable, even with absolutely perfect environmental conditions/treatment.
Because of this ruling, anyone who ever tries to claim a Paragraph 29 violation has occurred will have to meet this extremely high standard of evidence that the Court has laid out.
Huh, yeah, seems like a loss to me.
Correspondingly, while the OP does not engage in "literally lying" I think sentences like "In light of this ruling, we believe that farmers are breaking the law if they continue to keep these chickens." and "The judges have ruled in favour on our main argument - that the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will suffer because of how they have been bred." strike me as highly misleading, or at least willfully ignorant, based on your explanation here.
Agreed, this post seems like it goes way against standard forum norms if this is correct
I don’t think THL UK’s view of the case is as unreasonable as implied. (See my reply below.) And it’s reasonable for them to provide their view of what it implies for farmers. But the statement about the judges’ ruling does seem somewhat misleading because it suggests that the law is concerned with whether animals will suffer in practice, whereas it seems to be concerned with whether they will suffer in theory. In other words, something like “the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will invariably suffer because of how they have been bred” may be more accurate. But again, I don’t think this is as hard to prove as it might seem at first glance. (Again, see my reply below for a fuller analysis.)
I don’t think THL UK’s view of the case is as unreasonable as implied.
THL claimed "we believe that last week's ruling on Franken chickens marks 'the beginning of the end of this type of this type of outdated farming'"[1] and has a collaborative post on their Instagram page that states that this ruling marked "a significant victory for animal welfare."[2][3]
The Court dismissed THL's case, and provided an unfavorable interpretation of the animal welfare law in question.[4] All trial courts in the UK (except for those in Northern Ireland and Scotland) are now required to use this unfavorable interpretation of the animal welfare law in question.
Is this a significant victory for animal welfare?
Thanks for getting back to me. I think there is a spectrum of interpretations of Paragraph 29, some more favourable and some less favourable to animals.
The least favourable interpretation is that the law does not provide farms with a "conditional permission" - that is, the law does not establish a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals subject to a "proviso". This was the position taken by a High Court judge in May 2023, and would have ruled out private prosecutions of farms.
The "victory" in the Court of Appeal came in the Court's ruling that:
Paragraph 29 is correctly characterisied as a prohibition which is subject to a proviso. The keeping of animals for farming purposes is prohibited unless it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health and welfare... In this respect, therefore, [the Court does not] agree with the view of the judge, who considered that Paragraph 29 could not be read this way.
As Essex Court Chambers put it:
In disagreement with the judge, the Court held in summary that the relevant paragraphs of the Regulations establish a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals which have been bred by genetic selection with a view to achieving certain characteristics, unless it can reasonably be expected on the basis of the way that they have been bred that the animals can be kept without any detrimental effect on health and welfare... The Judgment is a significant analysis of the legal obligations that apply to keepers of meat chickens and is likely to have consequences for farmed animals generally. The way forward will be a matter for the Government or the courts in the event of prosecutions.
It is true that the most favourable interpretation for animals - that the law establishes a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals in the conditions that they are likely to be kept - was not upheld by the Court.
But I maintain that while this means that the bar is high, I don't think it's as high as it seems at first glance. You rightly point out that the Court said that "Paragraph 29 is a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals whose genotype and phenotype mean that, regardless of the conditions in which they are kept, they cannot be kept without detriment to their health or welfare".
But they go on to say:
However, this needs some further explanation. There is a difference between detrimental characteristics which are inherent in the nature of the breed and which cannot be mitigated by changing the environmental conditions in which the animal is kept, and those which can be so mitigated... the conclusions contained in the RSPCA Report, if valid... appear to illustrate this difference. If it is correct (and I emphasise 'if') that, when compared with slow-growing chickens, a particular breed of fast-growing chickens suffers from increased heart problems with consequential higher mortality, or leg development disorders because the chicken cannot support its own weight, it would seem likely (contrary to the Secretary of State's view, although this is ultimately a matter for scientific evidence) that no improvement in the environmental conditions in which such chickens are kept could mitigate those detrimental effects upon their health or welfare. Those consequences would be inherent in the particular breed of chicken and the keeping of such a breed would be prohibited by Paragraph 29. The same might be true of the problems caused by hock burn and foot burn as a result of prolonged periods of inactivity.
Similarly, Welfare Footprint write: "Although the adoption of better management practices – including lower stocking density, longer resting times and the provision of enrichment – is beneficial and desirable for improving broiler welfare, their impact is limited if the negative welfare effects inherently associated with the genetics for fast growth are not addressed."
One question I do have is why THL UK took DEFRA to Court, instead of bringing a private prosecution of a factory farm. One reason might be that this was an attempt to affect the whole industry, whereas any positive Judgment in the case of a particular farm might still only apply to that farm, even if it establishes a precedent that can be used to bring successful prosecutions against other farms. In other words, taking DEFRA to Court may have been considered a quicker and more efficient route.
This might be of interest to: @Ozzie Gooen @MHR @MichaelStJules @bruce @Rasool.
Thank you for clarifying this. We agree that our comment above implied a greater degree of unreasonableness on behalf of THL than was warranted.
That being said, we still believe the law is likely in a worse place for animals compared to before the filing of the initial case. The interpretation offered by the Court appears to be quite strict, and we suspect it will be difficult for subsequent litigants to meet the evidentiary standard established by this case. Hopefully we are wrong about this.
We also still believe that THL’s communication surrounding this case was quite poor, and misleading. Notably, THL did not even disclose the name of the court case in this post, or in the post on their website.
I disagree that this makes it “extremely” difficult to prove that a violation of Paragraph 29 has occurred. A judge might find it hard to imagine environmental conditions that even in theory could mitigate the suffering caused by their genetics. You could feed them less, but farmers already do this with breeder birds (to prevent them from becoming overweight) and this is itself a welfare concern because it can result in starvation.
As Welfare Footprint puts it: "Although the adoption of better management practices – including lower stocking density, longer resting times and the provision of enrichment – is beneficial and desirable for improving broiler welfare, their impact is limited if the negative welfare effects inherently associated with the genetics for fast growth are not addressed."
It is a higher bar than implied by the post, though. (See my post below for a fuller analysis of the case.)
Thank you to everyone for the comments and reflections on our 16th December post about our Judicial Review, “News from THL UK: Judge rules on our historic Frankenchicken case.”
There was some very useful feedback on there, which we will definitely be taking on board. Some commenters felt our post was overly celebratory, lacked nuance or was unclear. Your feedback was very helpful, and in the future, we will be constructing our posts taking this feedback into account.
In this post we’re going to go into a lot more detail, to explain and back up the thinking that informed the original post. First, some background on why we brought the case. The provision in question is Schedule 1 paragraph 29, which is currently under the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations (WOFAR), and states that animals with genetics prone to detriment cannot be kept for farming purposes.
Despite this provision being on the books in some form since the 1990s, not a single prosecution has been brought under it. And under this law, there has been a proliferation of the use of fast-growing breeds of chickens in the UK (just over 1 billion per year currently–about 95% of the UK flock). Commonly used fast-growing meat chickens are bred to grow very quickly, to produce the most amount of meat in the shortest possible time. This rate of growth would be equivalent to a human child reaching 28 stone by three years of age. As a result, they often struggle to stand and walk, develop painful lesions on their legs, suffer from heart defects and even experience sudden death - all in unacceptably high numbers. This is evidenced by a 2020 report carried out by the RSPCA.
So clearly, this law wasn’t doing the job it was created to do. Local councils, who have jurisdiction over farms in their catchment area, were failing to bring prosecutions against farmers using fast-growing breeds of chickens, and Defra, who also has the power to intervene and prosecute, instead created a code of practice for chicken welfare which dodged the issue and simply stated that farmers must weigh up productivity and welfare concerns when choosing chicken breeds:
“59. Welfare and health considerations, in addition to productivity, should be taken into account when choosing a strain for a particular purpose or production system. In line with this, meat chickens should stem from broad breeding programmes, which promote and protect health, welfare and productivity. Keeping birds in line with appropriate growth curves that optimise these criteria, particularly with regard to leg health, should be considered.”
Given that vague guidance, under the status quo farmers are not compelled to choose slower-growing breeds who suffer less detriment to their welfare. Without legal intervention by an independent organisation, this law, while seemingly good on paper, would continue to sit on the statute books, being wholly ineffective, allowing for the further proliferation of fast-growing breeds of chickens, for years to come.
THL UK did lose our judicial review appeal–the court did not make a declaration, which could have had the consequence of ending the use of fast-growing breeds, and the court did not find that Defra had a policy on fast-growing breeds of chicken that clearly misinterpreted paragraph 29.
Our hope going into the appeal was that the panel of judges, after hearing oral arguments and considering the evidence, might order Defra to update the current Code of Practice or create a new one entirely that was in alignment with the provisions of paragraph 29 (which we feel clearly prohibits the use of fast-growing breeds of chickens). Unfortunately, the court didn’t do that, and felt that Defra’s current Code of Practice for meat chickens offered no interpretation of paragraph 29 at all (which it is not legally required to do) and meant our judicial review fell down at this hurdle.
Our case rested on this language in paragraph 29 of WOFAR, which says “Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.’ During the series of court hearings spanning the last three years, the government attempted to pick holes in the language of this legislation, offering alternative interpretations which would allow the continued use of fast-growing breeds of chickens. They argued, and I’m paraphrasing here, that:
The government’s interpretation would have made it very difficult, if not impossible, to end the use of fast-growing breeds under paragraph 29.
While we technically lost the case, we feel the ruling was a legal breakthrough for animals because it finally gave clarity to the meaning of key aspects of paragraph 29–something that has been in contention for years–and the Court of Appeal’s interpretation can be used as the basis for future legal actions against industry to challenge their use of fast-growing breeds.
This is the significant ground we feel we gained because of the case:
1. “Reasonably be expected”.
Justice Males, in his conclusion, overturned the lower court's interpretation of this phrase by recognising that what is reasonable or not is a question of fact and that the “controversy” surrounding a breed should inform what the keeper is reasonably expected to know. He said:
“53. …it is reasonable to expect that a reasonable person keeping or intending to keep fast-growing chickens, who is after all responsible for their health and welfare, would at least be aware of the controversy about the keeping of such chickens and would take some steps to inform him- or herself about it.”
This interpretation is significant because it speaks to the level and type of information farmers should seek out, and (we feel) lays the groundwork for demonstrating criminal liability for any farmer that does not familiarise themselves with the commonly-held scientific opinion that fast-growing breeds of birds invariably suffer more than their slower-growing counterparts.
2. “Any detriment”.
THL UK felt that the government’s position–that seemed to suggest that no breeds of conventional chickens should be prohibited under paragraph 29 because all animals suffer some detriment because of their genes, even the higher-welfare, slower-growing breeds–was an absurd one. The Justices in the appeal thankfully saw through this attempt to gut paragraph 29 of any meaning by giving detailed reasoning that in order for a breed of chicken to be banned, the suffering must be more than insignificant. Justice Underhill in the Court of Appeal said:
"77...I agree that in a case where a proportion, but only an insignificant proportion, of the animals of a particular breed will suffer harm (most obviously by developing some illness or injury) by being kept for farming purposes the prohibition in paragraph 29 should not apply. That conclusion may perhaps, as he says, be implicit in the phrase “can reasonably be expected”, but it can also be reached by declining to read the language of paragraph 29 literally: it is derived from an EU Directive, where the strict techniques of domestic drafting are not employed. In para. 57 Males LJ takes this approach in considering whether some minimum threshold of the degree and/or duration of suffering is implicit in the language of “detrimental effect”: I think a similar approach is appropriate in considering the degree of incidence of detrimental effects in the relevant population. The other point which I would note about para. 58 concerns Males LJ’s characterisation of the situation under consideration as one where the detrimental effect “occurs more often in animals of one particular breed than another”. That formulation reflects the fact that paragraph 29 is directed to characteristics which are peculiar to a particular breed – that is the effect of the phrase “on the basis of their genotype or phenotype” – from which it necessarily follows that there will be breeds which do not share that characteristic (or not in the same degree)."
3. “Environmental conditions.”
During the course of the hearings, Defra made the claim that a farmer would not not be in contravention of Paragraph 29 if they could hypothetically eliminate the suffering. Defra provided no scientific evidence on what these hypothetical improvements would be. Our position has always been that while environmental improvements can of course reduce some suffering endured by chickens, they cannot remove all of the suffering.
Fast-growing chickens’ speed of growth puts an unnaturally large strain on the chicken's musculoskeletal system (leading to painful leg deformities and lameness) and respiratory system (leading to disease, heart attacks, and sudden death). This strain and suffering happens because of the animal's breed type, not because of the amount of sunlight or space that the chickens receive. And there are no scientific studies showing that environmental improvements can fully eliminate the welfare issues associated with fast-growing breeds. Defra’s claim flies in the face of science, and against the findings by Scotland’s Rural College, who in 2020 ran a study (commissioned by the RSPCA) showing that fast-growing breeds, when given identical environmental conditions as slower-growing breeds, suffered from significantly poorer health.
Lord Justice Males concluded that if Scotland’s Rural College findings are correct, then the use of fast-growing breeds should be prohibited. He said:
"52. Coming closer to home, the conclusions contained in the RSPCA Report, if valid, also appear to illustrate this difference. If it is correct (and I emphasise ‘if’) that, when compared with slow-growing chickens, a particular breed of fast-growing chickens suffers from increased heart problems with consequential higher mortality, or leg development disorders because the chicken cannot support its own weight, it would seem likely (contrary to the Secretary of State’s view, although this is ultimately a matter for scientific evidence) that no improvement in the environmental conditions in which such chickens are kept could mitigate those detrimental effects upon their health or welfare. Those consequences would be inherent in the particular breed of chicken and the keeping of such a breed would be prohibited by Paragraph 29."
Judicial reviews are about scrutinising government policy and procedures, and do not weigh the merits of scientific claims or scientific studies, which is why Lord Justice Males said ‘if’ the study ‘is correct’. If an organisation were to bring a private criminal prosecution against a chicken farmer, the case would be heard by a Magistrates court, where scientific evidence is presented by expert witnesses and considered carefully, and we feel the science is very clearly on our side.
4. “Animal health and welfare over commercial benefit”
Modern breeding techniques are creating animals that are optimised for productivity (rapid weight gain, large volume of milk production, etc) which often comes at a cost to their health and welfare. This drive for increased productivity has been happening under the watchful eye of Defra and plays a supersized part of the decision-making process farmers go through when choosing which animals to use. High productivity is good for business. Defra’s current code of practice for meat chickens says that “Welfare and health considerations, in addition to productivity, should be taken into account when choosing a strain for a particular purpose or production system.”
Lord Justice Males, in his conclusion, gave a different and strong interpretation of paragraph 29, squarely saying that the legislation is about prioritising and optimising animal welfare, not productivity or commercial benefit.
"60. It is important to be clear, however, that there is no question of balancing the advantage of higher productivity against the detrimental effect(s) on an animal’s health or welfare. If a given breed can reasonably be expected to suffer a detrimental effect on its health or welfare because of its genetic make-up, the prohibition on keeping that breed of animal applies regardless of any commercial advantages which it may have. Paragraph 29 unequivocally prioritises animal health and welfare over commercial benefit."
Lord Justice Males gives farmers a very clear decision matrix to follow when choosing breed type. This clear steer from the Appellate Court on the intention of paragraph 29 can be used when bringing a private criminal prosecution, and can be used by other animal advocates when bringing legal challenges that focus on other species of animals that fall under paragraph 29, like dairy cows and pigs.
Next steps
We feel the favourable interpretation of paragraph 29 that was secured through our case significantly increases the chances of a successful criminal prosecution being brought against a farmer who chooses to use fast-growing breeds. Before our case, there was ambiguity and disagreement around paragraph 29 and what it meant for farming. While we always believed paragraph 29 prohibits fast-growing breeds, it is still written in very general terms. It’s largely down to the secondary legislation and codes of practice to give the detail to the primary legislation. But Defra opted to not create any specific clarity through its regulations and code of practice, creating ambiguity and giving farmers the latitude to pick breeds as they please with very little fear of legal repercussions. And that generality to the primary legislation, and absence of a code, makes prosecuting farmers very difficult. What the Appeals Court ruling has done is stripped away much of that ambiguity, and gives any organisation or public body a stronger footing to bring a prosecution.
There are two public bodies that have the authority to prosecute farmers–Defra, and the local councils that oversee the jurisdictions where farmers operate. We have not seen a single prosecution brought against farmers over paragraph 29, so it is up to animal advocates like THL UK to consider bringing one of our own, which we can do as a private prosecution. Over the months ahead, our team will be weighing up the pros and cons of bringing such a case, and the chances we have of transforming British farming, for the better, through another legal intervention.
And in the meantime, while Defra is not legally obligated to create a policy on fast growth, we feel that this legal interpretation of paragraph 29 should empower and encourage them to now give farmers specific guidance (in the form of an updated code, or a new code altogether) that specifically prohibits the use of certain fast-growing breeds of chickens. THL UK, the RSPCA, and Advocates for Animals will be lobbying Defra in order to see these changes take place.
NOTES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JM0egmSOCw&t=8025s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFDuxkk47yU&t=6392s
Does someone have a rough fermi on the tradeoffs here? On priors it seems like chickens bred to be bigger would overall cause less suffering because they replace more than one chicken that isn't bread to be as big, but I would expect those chickens to suffer more. I can imagine it going either way, but I guess my prior is that it was broadly good for each individual chicken to weigh more.
I am a bit worried the advocacy here is based more on a purity/environmentalist perspective where genetically modifying animals is bad, but I don't give that perspective much weight. But it could also be great from a more cost-effectiveness/suffering-minimization oriented perspective, and would be curious in people's takes.
(Molly was asked this question in a previous post two months ago, but as far as I can tell responded mostly with orthogonal claims that don't really engage with the core ethical question, so am curious in other people's takes)
Welfare Footprint Project has analysis here, which they summarize:
Adoption of the Better Chicken Commitment, with use of a slower-growing breed reaching a slaughter weight of approximately 2.5 Kg at 56 days (ADG=45-46 g/day) is expected to prevent “at least” 33 [13 to 53] hours of Disabling pain, 79 [-99 to 260] hours of Hurtful and 25 [5 to 45] seconds of Excruciating pain for every bird affected by this intervention (only hours awake are considered). These figures correspond to a reduction of approximately 66%, 24% and 78% , respectively, in the time experienced in Disabling, Hurtful and Excruciating pain relative to a conventional scenario due to lameness, cardiopulmonary disorders, behavioral deprivation and thermal stress.
The reduction in suffering per chicken is probably >24% if this analysis is correct, and it accounts for longer lives. My guess is >50%, giving substantial weight to disabling pain relative to milder pain. Accounting for more chickens necessary for the same amount of meat (EDIT: although WFP assumes they grow to the same weight) wouldn't flip things. (And there would be a reduction in demand to partially offset this, due to higher costs per kg of meat.)
Lameness-related pain primarily due to their breed seems to be the largest source of their suffering and responsible for a lot of suffering, so it makes sense to me that slower growing breeds would be better off.
Thank you! This is the kind of analysis I was looking for.
I think it's worth noting here that (if I'm understanding it right) the alternative breeds recommended by the better chicken commitment are slower-growing but don't have a lower max weight. And the welfare footprint project numbers on pain durations already account for the longer time to reach full weight.
I think it's worth noting here that (if I'm understanding it right) the alternative breeds recommended by the better chicken commitment are slower-growing but don't have a lower max weight.
I'm not sure, but the optimal weight at slaughter could be lower, which I think Lusk et al. (blog post) found for the US. Even if they could reach the same maximum weight, it may be more profitable to slaughter them at lower weights.
And the welfare footprint project numbers on pain durations already account for the longer time to reach full weight.
Ya, I intended to imply that, but could have worded things better. I've edited my comment.
Gotcha, that makes sense! Even if producers slaughter at a lower weight, I think the number of chicken-days of life per kg of meat shouldn't change much relative to what goes into the WFP analysis. So I don't think that producers slaughtering earlier changes the quantity of time spent suffering very significantly, just whether it's distributed among fewer longer-lived chickens or more shorter-lived chickens.
Ah, ya:
For the reformed scenario, represented by the use of a slower-growing strain, we assumed an average ADG of 45-46 g/day, hence that the same slaughter weight would be reached in approximately 56 days.
(Obvious flag that I know very little about this specific industry)
Agreed that this seems like an important issue. Some quick takes:
Less immediately- obvious pluses/minuses to this sort of campaign:
- Plus #1: I assume that anything the animal industry doesn't like would increase costs for raising chickens. I'd correspondingly assume that we should want costs to be high (though it would be much better if it could be the government getting these funds, rather than just decreases in efficiency).
- Plus #2: It seems possible that companies have been selecting for growth instead of for well-being. Maybe, if they just can't select for growth, then selecting more for not-feeling-pain would be cheaper.
- Minus #1: Focusing on the term "Frankenchicken" could discourage other selective breeding or similar, which could be otherwise useful for very globally beneficial attributes, like pain mitigation.
- Ambiguous #1: This could help stop further development here. I assume that it's possible to later use selective breeding and similar to continue making larger / faster growing chickens.
I think I naively feel like the pluses outweigh the negatives. Maybe I'd give this a 80% chance, without doing much investigation. That said, I'd also imagine there might well be more effective measures with a much clearer trade-off. The question of "is this a net-positive thing" is arguably not nearly as important as "are there fairly-clearly better things to do."
Lastly, for all of that, I do want to just thanks those helping animals like this. It's easy for me to argue things one way or the other, but I generally have serious respect for those working to change things, even if I'm not sure if their methods are optimal. I think it's easy to seem combative on this, but we're all on a similar team here.
In terms of a "rough fermi analysis", as I work in the field, I think the numeric part of this is less important at this stage than just laying out a bunch of the key considerations and statistics. What I first want is a careful list of costs and benefits - that seems mature, fairly creative, and unbiased.
- Plus #1: I assume that anything the animal industry doesn't like would increase costs for raising chickens. I'd correspondingly assume that we should want costs to be high (though it would be much better if it could be the government getting these funds, rather than just decreases in efficiency).
I think this feels like a very aggressive zero-sum mindset. I agree that sometimes you want to have an attitude like this, but I at least at the present think that acting with the attitude of "let's just make animal industry as costly as possible" would understandable cause backlash, make it harder to come to agreements, and I think a reasonable justice system would punish people who do such things (even if they think they are morally in the right).
I feel like that's pretty unfair.
You asked for a "rough fermi estimate of the trade-offs", I gave you a list of potential trade-offs.
If we're willing to make decisions with logic like, "while genetically modifying unnaturally fast-growing chickens in factory farms would increase the pain of each one, perhaps the math works out so that there's less pain overall", I feel like adding considerations like, "this intervention will also make meat more expensive, which will reduce use" is a pretty vanilla consideration.
No, those are two totally separate types of considerations? In one you are directly aiming to work against the goals of someone else in a zero-sum fashion, the other one is just a normal prediction about what will actually happen?
You really should have very different norms about how you are dealing with adversarial considerations and how you are dealing with normal causal/environmental considerations. I don't care about calling them "vanilla" or not, I think we should generally have a high prior against arguments of the form "X is bad, Y is hurting X, therefore Y is good".
The chickens don't end up weighing more at the point that they go to slaughter - the faster growth rate is so that they get to the same slaughter weight in a shorter space of time, which uses less feed. Chickens with faster growth rates therefore aren't replacing more than one slower-growing chicken.
The slower-growing breeds live for longer, which would be bad if it was extending the same pain intensity over a longer period of time, but this seems like it isn't what happens: https://welfarefootprint.org/broilers/
Sure, I don't think it makes a difference whether the chicken grows to a bigger size in total, or grows to a bigger size more quickly, both would establish a prior that you need fewer years of chicken-suffering for the same amount of meat, and as such that this would be good (barring other considerations).
FWIW, Molly's comment you linked to quoted and cited Welfare Footprint Project and basically addressed something like "grows to a bigger size more quickly":
The Welfare Footprint Project used the Cumulative Pain Framework to investigate how the adoption of the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) and similar welfare certification programs affect the welfare of broilers. Specifically, they examined concerns that the use of slower-growing breeds may increase suffering by extending the life of chickens for the production of the same amount of meat. From their main findings they stated:
'Our results strongly support the notion that adoption of BCC standards and slower-growing broiler strains have a net positive effect on the welfare of broiler chickens. Because most welfare offenses endured by broilers are strongly associated with fast growth, adoption of slower-growing breeds not only reduces the incidence of these offenses but also delays their onset. As a consequence, slower-growing birds are expected to experience a shorter, not longer, time in pain before being slaughtered.'
You are right! I had mostly paid attention to the bullet points, which didn't extract the parts of the linked report that addressed my concerns, but you are right that it totally links to the same report that totally does!
So pleased to see this! Please update us on the next steps when you know about them. (Though I understand that sometimes it is better not to share details about legal cases).
Specifically, I'm wondering: does the judge agreeing with the key argument open up other potential legal cases, for example? If DEFRA's labelling scheme became a reality, would that mean they'd have to make statements about the wellbeing of Frankenchickens?
From the rest of the comments, it looks as if I misunderstood this line: "The judges have ruled in favour on our main argument - that the law says that animals should not be kept in the UK if it means they will suffer because of how they have been bred. This is a huge moment for animals in the UK." I.e., it looks as if it should be rephrased to "solely because of how they have been bred", still a good thing, but not the home run I was hoping for.
I really appreciated clarification from @JBentham (this is particularly helpful), and the pushback on the content of the post from @Habryka, @VettedCauses and others!
Great victory from THL UK -- well done!
[Disclaimers: This is more shallow and conclusory than I'd like due to non-EA stuff that has been going on in my life. Although I am a lawyer, I lack professional experience with UK law specifically, although it is a common-law jurisdiction like the US . Still, I thought there was value in me saying something before this got too stale.]
1. The opinion of the Court of Appeals, Civil Division ("CACD") seems to be a mixed bag, and THL UK's post seems overall too rosy. On the other hand, I find VettedCauses' analysis in the comments to be too pessimistic.
2. CACD's interpretation of paragraph 29 seems somewhere in the middle of plausible interpretations of the relevant text. It is certainly more favorable to animal advocacy than the position taken by the lower-court judge below.
3. Paragraph 29 needs to be understood in the context of the broader regulatory scheme, as described in the following excerpt from the judgment (emphasis mine):
I would therefore accept the Secretary of State’s case that Paragraph 29 is a prohibition on the keeping of farmed animals whose genotype and phenotype mean that, regardless of the conditions in which they are kept, they cannot be kept without detriment to their health or welfare. However, this needs some further explanation. There is a difference between detrimental characteristics which are inherent in the nature of the breed and which cannot be mitigated by changing the environmental conditions in which the animal is kept, and those which can be so mitigated.
For example, an animal which, because of the way in which it has been bred, is susceptible to cold will not suffer any detrimental effect on its health or welfare if it is kept indoors with appropriate heating during periods of cold weather. It can reasonably be expected, therefore, that such an animal can be kept without any detrimental effect on its health or welfare. The keeping of such an animal is not prohibited by Paragraph 29, although it may be that other provisions of the legislation would be engaged if the animal was kept outside in the winter, or if adequate heating was not provided. That might constitute a failure to take reasonable steps in all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of the animal were met, contrary to section 9 of the 2006 Act.
(This continues with the language quoted by JBentham in another comment.)
In other words, Paragraph 29 covers cases in which no adequate mitigations are available, while advocates need to look to other legislative provisions to cover cases in which adequate mitigations were available but not employed. I assume that these theories could be charged in the alternative in a prosecution (i.e., the advocates would not have to commit to one theory in advance).
4. THL UK did not succeed in compelling the UK authorities to do anything, and seems to have at least de-emphasized this part of its case on appeal. From a US law perspective, it is hard to compel a regulator to regulate when it doesn't want to -- so I am not surprised by the loss or the court's reasoning. The status quo was that Defra wasn't acting, and there wasn't to my knowledge a viable alternative pathway to compel Defra's action. So this is a loss but does not sound like a worsening of the status quo.
5. So what's the theory of impact here? THL UK's post points to planned private prosecutions as the current plan. The English legal system is unusually friendly to private prosecutions -- but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) can take over a privately-conducted prosecution at any time, including with the specific intent of discontinuing the prosecution. This includes cases in which it deems the public-interest test for prosecution is not met. Although I have no knowledge of CPS decisionmaking in these circumstances, I would guess that CPS would weigh the view of the responsible governmental agency quite strongly in making this determination.
6. If Defra has pointedly declined to endorse anything remotely near THL UK's view of the facts and the law, then I speculate that THL UK needed a somewhat favorable judicial interpretation of Paragraph 29 to avoid CPS taking over any potential prosecution and discontinuing it. Litigation was and is always a risk, but THL UK may have reasonably concluded that Paragraph 29 wasn't of much use without either Defra support or judicial support.
7. Likewise, I think most Magistrates' Courts would be very unlikely to convict without some official/authoritative source putting farmers on notice with sufficient specificity that they could be violating the criminal law. That makes sense, because this is a criminal statute and Paragraph 29 is written at a very high level of generality. A report written by an advocacy organization is not, in my view, an official/authoritative source. So again, I think it was reasonable to think that THL UK -- having failed to get buy-in from Defra -- needed something from a precedential judicial authority before initiating criminal prosecutions.
8. Defendants convicted before the magistrates can get a rehearing from the Crown Court (the upper-level criminal court). After that, they can seek leave to appeal to . . . the Court of Appeal. So in all likelihood, any successful path to prosecution would be going through the Court of Appeal one way or another (although it would be the Criminal Division).
9. THL UK isn't made of money. I assume it would be much more cost-effective to figure out what the law is, and then build your trial around that legal standard . . . rather than running all the expenses of trial against very well-heeled defendants and then risking everything getting thrown out because the Criminal Division didn't agree with the lower courts on the law.
10. All in all, the choice of litigation strategy seems reasonable to me, and I suspect there is still a potentially viable way forward for THL UK -- even if it isn't the way forward THL UK might have hoped for.