A few days ago it was announced that several major restaurant chains in the UK, such as Burger King, KFC, Popeyes, Nando’s and Wagamama, decided to ditch the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), in which, among other things, they pledged to stop using fast-growing chickens.
Reasons given for this withdrawal are that exploiting slower-growing chickens produces more greenhouse gas emissions than faster-growing ones, and that they must meet the surging demand for chickens’ flesh which is considered a lean protein source. Companies such as KFC and Wingstop have reported substantial growth due to UK’s growing appetite for chicken, particularly among Gen Z consumers. The number of UK restaurants serving chicken grew by 6.5 per cent in 2025, and more than 90% of them are bred to grow extremely rapidly to an extremely large size, usually from chick to the human desired slaughter weight in just 35 days.
Obviously the greenhouse gas emission claim is just an excuse. But it is an excuse that feeds humans who are anyway looking for reasons to nevertheless keep consuming nonhumans. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the production of “red meat” generates, on average, four times more greenhouse-gas emissions than an equivalent amount of chickens flesh or fishes flesh. The study also argues that “red meat” is so resource-intensive, that if all humans cut their consumption of it by one-quarter, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be the same as shifting to a 100% locally sourced diet.
Statistical bits of information such as this are all that humans want and need to hear in order for them to consider themselves environmentally friendly despite taking the most negligible behavioral change – eating fewer cows.
The bigger harm of these studies is not that they permit humans to make do with reducing their cows consumption, but that they greenwash chickens consumption. In the earlier mentioned study chickens and turkeys were found to be the least environmentally harmful.
The vast majority of humans don’t ask themselves “should I stop eating meat?”, but if anything, they ask “which kind of meat causes the least climate change?”, and the answer unfortunately prompts more chickens flesh consumption. So chickens, who are already the most numerous land victims on earth, which are bound to the severest genetic manipulation and to the harshest living conditions, will be even worse off.
Of course, there is something naive about attributing to ecological concerns such a strong role in humans’ consumption. We wish it was possible to say that environmental issues play such a significant role in humans’ behavior. Obviously the main reason for the horrible rapid increase in the global “production” of chickens – more than 12-fold in the last 50 years – has very little to do with environmental concern and a lot to do with the price and availability of chickens flesh, as well as with a good (but false) healthful reputation. Still, chickens’ green label, as false as it is, plays some role in the global flesh consumption, especially in the last decade, and maybe in the decades to come which would probably be even worse than this one.
Chickens are the most extreme representatives of the industry’s ability to manipulate animals’ bodies in a way which fits the exploiters needs – convert feed more “efficiently”, and grow larger.
The historic differences between the early 20th century chickens to the ones bred today are common knowledge for activists, but less known is the fact that this trend continues, and each year the “market weight” of chickens still increases. Recent campaigns calling for exploitation of chickens from less deformed breeds, wishing to somewhat reverse this extremely violent trend, face the industry’s cynical green-washed excuses about the supposed unsustainability of this call. The National Chicken Council (NCC) emphases that such a move would result in the use of more environmental resources due to the increase in feed and water, and due to the overall number of days it would take to raise the birds.
Other experts also admit that less crippled chickens who suffer less pain with each step, tend to move around more and therefore waste more energy, which is less efficient.
The NCC went on a media campaign, releasing public statements about a “study” regarding the financial and environmental costs of slow-growing chickens. While their figures were discredited (this “study” they’ve produced wasn’t peer-reviewed, had no authors listed, and was not conducted by an independent university body or impartial scientific committee, but by the industry itself), the industry nevertheless used the “findings” – that exploitation of less crippled chickens is less sustainable – to keep intensifying the exploitation. Of course such a twisted ecological claim can work in favor of the exploiters only thanks to humans’ habit of not caring about chickens.
About 10 animal welfare organizations launched the Better Chicken Commitment in 2017 and now it went down the drain with the decision of the exploitation corporations to ditch it.
For how long would the few humans who care about nonhumans put their fate in the hands of those who absolutely don’t?! For how long would the few humans who care about nonhumans work so hard for a chance to get so little and eventually gain nothing, instead of working hard for a chance to get everything?
It was long ago the time for the few humans who care about nonhumans to stop asking exploitative corporations to sign a Better Chicken Commitment, and start signing themselves on the best sentient commitment.
