Britain will need to build more mega-farms to keep it supplied with chicken, according to the head of the UK’s influential poultry lobby.

But the biggest threat to UK consumers, he believes, comes from cheap imported meat – “chlorinated chicken” – produced to lower standards as a result of post-Brexit trade deals.

Most Brits eat chicken twice a week. As a result Britain’s poultry sector is among the largest in Europe, contributing more than £3bn to the economy annually and directly employing more than 37,000 people.



Between 2011 and 2017 the sector saw a 27% jump in the number of poultry farms holding 40,000 or more birds, and most of Britain’s intensive farms overall – 86% – are dedicated to rearing poultry.

“Larger farms are probably the most efficient way to go in terms of technology, resources, impact,” Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council (BPC), told the Guardian. He believes that ultimately such farms are “the way that we’re going to feed the country.”

But what about animal welfare issues? Pressure groups such as Compassion In World Farming say the spread of “mega-farms” is “cruel and unnecessary” and that farming birds intensively indoors is inherently bad for welfare.

Griffiths believes that this is not the case. “Indoor reared birds, on any size of farm, are in a controlled environment that provides good welfare. We operate under science-based legislation, the requirements of which are delivered by professional farmers and vets with high levels of training and experience.”

If consumers want free range chicken, it is available, he says. “For consumers who want to emphasise one or two parts of the production chain then an extensive choice is available across the country, and it is this variety of indoor and free-range that is a strength of British poultry meat production.”

The poultry industry has reduced antibiotic use: figures published last month show a dramatic reduction of 82% overall since 2012, which has been praised by government regulators. It was the first livestock sector in the UK to begin collecting its own antibiotic usage data in 2011, according to Griffiths.

“It started with questioning whether the practices we were using were the right ones. And that also coincided with a greater interest in farm health and welfare. We were involved with some big work on farm welfare with government at the time. Those two coincided with the mindset of – let’s try to reduce, let’s try to use less. In any given situation, do we have to use antibiotics?”

But antibiotic-free poultry production – as some companies in the US are championing – is not currently on the table, he believes. “I don’t think that’s possible, and anybody who says it is, is naive.”

Following recent suggestions by the US trade representative that the UK’s animal welfare and food safety standards were “unnecessary and restrict trade”, Griffiths hit back, saying such claims were “insulting”.

“British poultry producers don’t dip their chicken carcasses in chlorine as we do not believe in ‘cleaning up at the end’ or taking any shortcuts when it comes to producing safe food,” he said. “Using chemicals to disinfect food at the end of a production process can hide a multitude of sins, but what it can’t hide is the need for their use in the first place.”

On a practical level, Griffiths said that, were cheap imports allowed to come in, the UK poultry sector could ultimately lose production capacity, with farms and slaughterhouses potentially forced to close. “My fear is that once we lose capacity it’s never coming back,” he said.

Some campaigners fear US meat imports could lead to a “race to the bottom” as UK producers seek to compete with cheaper products, with potential moves to lower standards and increasing pressure to ease UK regulations.

Griffiths says he believes this isn’t likely, and said the UK poultry industry is united: “I think we’ve nailed our colours to the mast on this. There’s a lot of political talk about improving standards, but maintaining and improving standards is the mentality that we have. We’re not going to drop standards.”