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A deep dive into meat chicken welfare

Chicken is Australia’s most popular animal protein, yet the welfare of the 750 million chickens raised for meat each year can be affected by rapid-growth breeding, housing conditions, handling and slaughter practices. While improvements through RSPCA Certified have helped enhance the lives of millions of birds, continued reform is needed to ensure all meat chickens are raised in environments that support their health, wellbeing and natural behaviours.

RSPCA Australia
Tuesday, 8 September 2026

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Chicken is Australia’s most popular animal protein, with around 750 million chickens raised for their meat each year.

Behind this enormous number are individual birds with complex needs, and their welfare can be affected at every stage of the production system; from genetics and living conditions to handling, transport and slaughter. The scale and intensity required to meet demand means chickens raised for meat can face significant welfare challenges.

Fast growth and the limits of genetics

One of the most serious welfare issues for meat chickens is that they’ve been selectively bred to grow rapidly. The average meat chicken will grow from baby chick to slaughter weight in 4 – 6 weeks, a whole lifetime for a bird in less time than it takes for a for a season to change.

Due to these genetics, their skeletal, muscle, and other bodily systems struggle to support the rate and extent of their growth. This can lead to lower activity levels, lameness, leg disorders, cardiovascular disease, increased susceptibility and stress, and higher mortality rates.

The continued use of fast-growing breeds is a particularly difficult issue because while environmental factors such as housing, or enrichment, can be improved during a chicken’s life, there are limits to how much the inherent welfare impacts genetic selection can be mitigated once a bird has been bred to grow rapidly.

Space to move freely

The majority of chickens raised for meat (80%) are farmed indoors, and the rest with outdoor access (free range) once they’re fully feathered. Indoor housing can help protect birds from predators and weather extremes, but high stocking densities can make it difficult for birds to move around easily or perform behaviours that are important to them, particularly as they grow larger and approach slaughter weight. In Australia, the current legal maximum stocking density for meat chickens is 40 kilograms per square metre and, with an average slaughter weight of around 2.5kg, this is the equivalent of around 16 chickens per square metre.

When there is not enough space, chickens may be less active and have fewer opportunities to rest, have difficulty moving away from other birds, have trouble accessing vital resources like feed and water, and be unable to express behaviours that are important to them such as ground scratching, pecking, perching, dustbathing and foraging. Higher stocking densities can also increase the risk of skin lesions (e.g. hock and footpad burn), lameness, and heat stress. For birds whose bodies are already under pressure from rapid growth, space and freedom to move are essential to their health and welfare.

Indoor housing quality

The quality of the indoor environment has a critical impact on how meat chickens experience their short lives. Inadequate ventilation in sheds can result in poor air quality, increasing the risk of heat stress, ammonia toxicity, and death. In order for the environment to be safe and comfortable for chickens there must be good ventilation that helps to control temperature, humidity, dust and ammonia levels.

Lighting also matters. In conventional commercial systems, meat chickens are generally housed in tunnel-ventilated sheds without access to an outdoor area or natural light (sunlight). In these systems, artificial lighting is used to mimic daylight and dark periods, however some farms will keep birds in long periods of bright light to reduce activity and encourage more feeding to aid in the rapid growth process.

Poor quality, barren environments are also an issue. Chickens are naturally motivated to perform behaviours such as ground scratching, ground pecking, perching, dustbathing and foraging. When they are housed in barren environments that do not accommodate for these highly motivated behaviours their welfare can be compromised. Litter quality is equally important. Wet or poorly maintained litter can increase the risk of skin lesions and prevent birds from performing normal behaviours. Dry, friable litter gives birds a surface they can interact with and supports both physical health and behavioural wellbeing.

Handling, transport, and slaughter

Meat chickens are young animals, even when they reach time for slaughter, and may have reduced mobility or fragile bodies due to their rapid growth. If handled poorly by workers who are not trained in calm and careful handling procedures, chickens may experience pain, fear, or distress and can be injured resulting in bruising, fractures, or death.

If a bird does become sick or injured, the most common euthanasia method is manual cervical dislocation (stretching the bird’s neck to dislocate the first cervical vertebrae from the skull), but this may not result in an immediate loss of consciousness causing pain and distress in the moments prior to death.

Welfare risks for birds continue beyond the farm; transport exposes them to unfamiliar environments, movement, weather conditions and deprivation of food and water. At slaughter, meat chickens must be stunned to ensure they’re unconscious and don’t experience pain during slaughter and prior to death. In Australia, there are two main methods for stunning chickens (electrical waterbath or controlled atmosphere stunning). Both have welfare risks, however electrical waterbath stunning has several inherent negative animal welfare impacts including birds being shackled upside down while fully conscious, compression of legs in the shackles, and risk of pre-stun shocks all causing pain, fear, and distress before entry into the electrical waterbath.

RSPCA Certified’s role in improving chicken welfare

RSPCA Certified is one part of RSPCA Australia’s broader approach to improving farm animal welfare, sitting alongside our advocacy and ongoing work with government and industry.

Over the past decade, the program has focused on practical improvements in key areas such as space allowance, lighting, perching, litter provision and management practices. By embedding these requirements in the Standard and working with producers, processors and stakeholders to put them into practice, RSPCA Certified has made a positive difference to the lives of hundreds of millions of chickens farmed for their meat in Australia.

The first RSPCA meat chicken Standard was released in 2010 and has had three full-scale reviews (2013, 2019, and 2026), along with minor updates in 2020. We know that, before the RSPCA Certified was introduced, meat chicken sheds generally had poor litter quality, low light levels, higher stocking densities, and lacked perching and enrichment. Now, because of the program, chickens farmed to the RSPCA Standard have more space to roam and move freely; they have dry friable litter to allow for their behavioural needs while minimising leg and foot issues; they have better lighting to encourage activity as well as periods of continuous darkness to rest properly; and, they have enrichment and perches to further encourage activity and positive behaviours. To date, the welfare improvements delivered through RSPCA Certified have been substantial, certified producers can be very proud of their contribution to improving animal welfare.

And while these changes represent meaningful progress, they are not the end point: not all of Australia’s chickens are farmed to the RSPCA Australia Standard and we know more needs to be done to ensure all chickens raised for meat in Australia experience better welfare throughout their lives. The RSPCA will continue to advocate at industry and government level to improve meat chicken genetics and encourage the uptake of slower-growing breeds, reduce the legal stocking density limits, push for better minimum legal requirements around shed ventilation, lighting and enrichment, and urge a phase out of stunning methods that require the conscious shackling of birds, to be replaced by more humane methods.

Chickens raised for their meat deserve conditions and husbandry practices that support their physical and mental health. When we look at the system through the lens of how a meat chicken experiences their life within it, the path forward is clear: animal welfare should come first.

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