In New Zealand, the treatment of farmed animals, including chickens, is governed by the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and specific Codes of Welfare designed for different farming sectors. The Animal Welfare Act requires that all animals live in conditions that allow them to express normal behaviours. For chickens, normal behaviours include perching, foraging, nesting, exploring, and enjoying sunshine and dust baths. 

However, the reality on chicken farms often contradicts these legal requirements. The Codes of Welfare, which are supposed to translate the Act into practice, allow conditions and practices that are a breach of the Act and prevent natural behaviours from occurring. For example, the legal stocking density permits up to 38 kilograms of chickens per square metre – meaning around 15 birds are crammed into a square metre. This overcrowding severely restricts movement and prevents natural behaviours. 

Moreover, the widespread use of fast-growing chicken breeds leads to significant health problems like heart disease, lameness, and chronic pain, practices that violate the Act’s prohibition against unnecessary suffering.  

A particularly troubling gap in New Zealand’s animal welfare system is the cruel and illegal treatment of chickens used to breed birds farmed for meat. These “parent” birds are often kept in appalling conditions and subjected to severe, routine food restriction to prevent them from growing too quickly and dying prematurely. Under the Animal Welfare Act, animals must be provided with proper and sufficient food –  a standard clearly violated by this practice. Despite this, the industry continues to rely on starvation as a management tool, with no oversight, no intervention, and no consequences from authorities. 

In practice, while New Zealand’s animal welfare laws sound protective, they fail to safeguard chickens effectively. The contradictions between the Animal Welfare Act and the Codes of Welfare, combined with gaps in regulation and enforcement, mean that tens of millions of chickens endure cruelty every day and the industry responsible is never held accountable.  

Yes – chicken farms in Aotearoa pose risks to both human health and the environment. 

Chicken farming is one of the leading causes of zoonotic disease transmission in New Zealand, and is the top cause for the spread of campylobacter disease. A study from Cambridge University found that between 2009 and 2018, fresh chicken meat was responsible for an estimated 539,000 cases of campylobacter infection. These infections led to 5,480 hospitalisations and 284 deaths. Alarmingly, the bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, making them harder and sometimes impossible to treat. Despite this, there are no warning labels on chicken products to inform consumers of these risks. 

The environmental impact is just as concerning. Chicken sheds are only cleaned after birds are sent to slaughter, allowing weeks of waste to build up. When sheds are finally cleared, harmful chemicals like ammonia, nitrates, and phosphates can leach into surrounding soil and waterways. This runoff can trigger eutrophication –  toxic algal blooms that destroy aquatic ecosystems and contaminate drinking water. Methane released from chicken waste also contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.  

To deal with the high levels of bacterial contamination caused by dirty farming conditions, slaughtered chicken bodies are often dipped in chlorine washes in an attempt to reduce contamination.  

Yes, avian influenza (bird flu) poses a serious risk across all types of chicken farms. In 2024, New Zealand experienced a significant outbreak on a factory free-range egg farm, leading to the mass killing of 200,000 hens in an attempt to contain the virus. These birds were slaughtered using carbon dioxide poisoning, a method that causes immense distress, panic, pain and suffering as the animals suffocate to death. 

Bird flu is not limited to egg-laying hens, it can affect any farmed bird. The virus spreads easily through shared food and water sources, faecal matter, and contaminated feathers. Given that chickens farmed for meat are typically farmed in massive sheds with tens of thousands of birds crammed together, the risk of viral spread is extremely high in these environments. 

The industry often claims that keeping chickens indoors is the solution to managing disease outbreaks. But confining animals in overcrowded, stressful, unsanitary conditions only fuels the problem – creating the perfect breeding ground for viruses like bird flu to mutate and spread. The real solution is not intensive indoor confinement or mass slaughter – it’s ending the use of intensive farming systems. 

Chickens farmed for meat and hens farmed for eggs are two different breeds of birds, who suffer in different farming systems and from different animal welfare issues.   

Chickens farmed for meat are selectively bred to grow incredibly fast – reaching slaughter weight in just six weeks of age. This unnatural growth causes serious health issues, including heart failure, lameness, and chronic pain. These birds are slaughtered for meat while they are still babies. 

Chickens farmed for eggs, hens, are bred not for body size, but for maximum egg production. Their bodies are pushed to lay hundreds of eggs per year, far more than what’s natural, leading to painful reproductive disorders, calcium depletion, and early death.  

Male chicks born into the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching because they don’t lay eggs and aren’t bred for meat production. In Aotearoa, this usually means they thrown into a large commercial blender while still alive shortly after hatching.  

While their “purposes” differ, both systems exploit chickens for profit and subject them to immense suffering. Choosing a plant-based diet is the most effective way to help end cruelty to all chickens.