Improving hen welfare

• The Better Chicken Commitment
• Quantifying animal suffering

Reducing the suffering of chickens through welfare improvements

• The Welfare Footprint Project’s studied the suffering reduction that occurs when producers adopt the European Chicken Commitment⁷ for broilers and cage-free systems for hens.
• For broilers, they found that compared to a conventional broiler, a broiler raised in ECC standards experiences:
  • 81% less excruciating pain (25s less)
  • 65% less disabling pain (32h less)
  • 23% less hurtful pain (78h less)
  • 5% more annoying pain (15h more)
• For hens, they found that compared to a battery-caged hen, a cage-free hen experiences:
  • 20% less excruciating pain (36s less)
  • 64% less disabling pain (275h less)
  • 57% less hurtful pain (2,314h less)
  • 69% less annoying pain (4,645h less)