Activists wearing chicken masks and covered in fake blood accompanied a giant Frankenchicken in a protest outside Lidl's city-centre store in Bristol yesterday, branding the supermarket the ‘Lidl Shop of Horrors' and accusing it of extreme cruelty to animals.
Protesters from animal welfare group The Humane League gathered outside the Lidl store in Broadmead Street in Bristol dressed as horror-film characters and escorting a giant-life-size 50kg Frankenchicken to demonstrate the horrific treatment of chickens in Lidl's supply chain and calling on it to stop selling fast-growing breeds of chicken. The protesters also handed a letter to the Lidl store manager.
This follows numerous undercover investigations, both in the UK and across Europe, which have revealed the shocking conditions and suffering on supplier farms linked to Lidl, as chickens are grown at an unnaturally fast rate.
These fast-growing chickens, known as Frankenchickens, make up around 90% of the over one billion chickens reared and killed for meat in the UK each year. As a result of their rapid growth, these chicken breeds grow from birth to slaughter weight in around 35 days and they can suffer from a wide range of health and welfare issues. These include heart attacks, organ failure, lameness, bone deformities, muscle diseases, ascites (water belly) and burns.
They also require between three and five times more antibiotics than slower-growing breeds - potentially creating dangerous diseases that also put people at risk.
Talking about the protest today, Jodi Darwood, campaigns co-ordinator for The Humane League, said: "We protested outside Lidl's supermarket in Broadmead Street in Bristol today with this giant Frankenchicken to show shoppers the true horror hidden in Lidl's supply chain.
"Eight separate investigations have uncovered a shocking pattern of abuse, pointing to widespread mistreatment of animals on farms associated with Lidl. This supermarket group has ignored calls to stop using fast-growing Frankenchickens, with suffering coded into their DNA. These chickens grow too big, too fast, and often cannot support their own weight. Left to sit in their own waste, their lives are full of suffering. Lidl's refusal to move away from these cruel practices is disturbing and nothing short of monstrous."
The charity also says that around one in 20 of these fast-growing chickens, who live in cramped barns, are culled or die of illness on farms, whereas slower-growing breeds experience around half the rate of mortality - making this a hugely unsustainable way to produce food, in addition to the animal cruelty.
The Humane League is calling for Lidl to stop standing by and allowing this to happen to chickens in its supply chain, and to sign up to the ‘Better Chicken Commitment'. KFC, Nando's, Greggs and Lidl France are among the 330+ companies in the UK and EU to have committed to the BCC, but the rest of Lidl has so far refused.
"It's clear switching to slower-growing breeds is better for chickens, humans, and the planet. That's why we're calling on Lidl to urgently change its supply chain." says Darwood.
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