Poultry Industry

8. Grants / funding given to poultry farmers.

The Pig and Poultry Investment Scheme gives Irish farmers access to a €17 million financial aid fund so that they can upgrade their equipment to meet the current standards of animal welfare. Only those who generate at least 20 production units are eligible, and applicants must meet the requirements of the scheme, which include training, age, tax clearance, and planning permission. The amount of grant given to successful applicants is 40% of the expenses, up to a maximum of €80,000.   

9. Studies on the impact of poultry farming on chickens (e.g. cruelty, stress, lack of natural environment).

The impact of poultry farming on chickens is extremely damaging and harmful, even in farms that claim to support animal “welfare”. 

• Egg-laying hens have their beaks – their main sensory organ – painfully clipped when they are just a day old. The life span of industrial egg-laying hens is only 1.4 years, compared to 4 years for non-industrial hens, due to an artificially sped up egg-laying rate. This causes the hens to become stressed which the industry claims “necessitates” the beak clipping to avoid them pecking each other.
• Caged egg-laying hens are kept in cages that are the size of an A4 sheet of paper, with a tiny bit of additional shared room for them to nest. This leads to egg-laying hens often breaking their bones due to collisions in such tight spaces. 
• Broiler chickens are kept in an artificially lit shed with 20,000-30,000 other birds, and the shed is not cleaned until the end of the life cycle of the birds, meaning that they are squatting in their own faeces for most of their life. This also causes burns and rashes on their legs.
• Male chicks in the egg-laying industry are killed, either by being gassed or shredded alive in a high-speed grinder. While Ireland mostly imports its chicks for egg-laying at one day old rather than hatching them, female chicks are imported from facilities that kill all their male chicks at birth.
• Broiler hens are forced to grow to unnaturally large sizes at rapid rates, causing their organs and legs to malfunction, with many suffering heart attacks. Broilers kept for breeding are starved to prevent them from becoming too large to mate.