THE PECKING ORDER: BENCHMARKING FAST FOOD CHAINS ON CHICKEN WELFARE
Each year Chronos, in collaboration with World Animal Protection, takes on the research, analysis and reporting for The Pecking Order (TPO) - a benchmark assessing how major fast food and other food service companies in Europe are advancing broiler chicken welfare in line with the European Chicken commitment (ECC) standards. The Pecking Order looks specifically at broiler chickens, i.e. chickens raised solely for meat production.
In the words of Dirk Jan Verdonk at World Animal Protection Netherlands The Pecking Order is, “Both a chart of fame and a chart of shame… [it shows] which companies take their responsibility seriously and which companies don’t.”
The Pecking Order in 2024
The 2024 Pecking Order which launched today, was the sixth iteration that Chronos has worked on. It covered 75 corporate assessments including companies like Burger King, KFC and McDonald’s, across seven European markets: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic.
The 2024 results found some encouraging signs of progress with 53 out of 75 companies (71%, compared to 65% in 2023) now having published a broiler chicken welfare policy and 19 companies (25%, compared to 19% in 2023) going further and reporting at least some performance impact data in their supply chain on welfare issues such as stocking density, use of cages, or use of humane slaughter processes.
The average score for ‘Pillar 2’, which focuses on performance reporting was 8%. So while this was a rise from 5% in 2023, it was still low and shows much progress still needs making to propel companies towards better welfare.
A history of The Pecking Order
The Pecking Order started back in 2019, launched by World Animal Protection (WAP), with an aim to drive better disclosure amongst food service companies of their efforts to improve broiler chickens’ welfare.
Since the start Chronos have undertaken the assessment of target companies, and the analysis of the results, working closely with WAP and other partners including Albert Schweitzer Stiftung, L214, Essere Animali, OBRAZ and the Humane Society International.
The benchmark, based on the ECC standards, focuses on six key welfare issues for achieving higher welfare standards:
· Reduced stocking density;
· Use of breeds with improved welfare potential;
· Provision of environmental enrichment;
· Elimination of broiler cages/multi-tier systems;
· Humane slaughter practices (e.g. controlled atmospheric stunning with inert gas or multi-phase systems, or effective electrical stunning without live inversion);
· Implementation of third-party auditing.
We have also helped steer several changes to the methodology through the years including a significant shift in 2022 to a more localised approach. This put the focus on how target companies implement their broiler chicken welfare commitments within selected individual markets – and hence creating separate company assessments for different entities in the same franchise. For example, Burger King in Spain now has a separate company assessment to Burger King in France.
Part of the role of The Pecking Order is also to be a tool for engagement, by showing companies how they compare to their peers and identifying best practices. Companies engage with the programme to review their preliminary assessments and discuss results with the NGO partners.
Moving forward
One of the changes for The Pecking Order in 2024 was the introduction of a new question asking companies whether they had published a roadmap towards meeting the specific ECC criteria.
This is a forward-looking innovation aiming to encourage companies to demonstrate that they are taking steps towards implementing the European Chicken Commitment at a time when there are concerns from the NGO partners that there is a lack of progress being demonstrated by committed companies.
We look forward to seeing this progress in the years to come.
To find out more about our work on animal welfare contact our Head of Food and Health: Dr Nathan Williams