The best and most effective way to stop contributing to animal suffering is to leave them off our plates and instead eat plant-based. The majority of chickens come from factory farms, while only a tiny percentage is part of organic production. These organic chickens have the possibility to go outside, but only if they are alive during the seasons with warm weather. They are typically of healthier chicken breeds and have more space per chicken compared to conventional chicken farms, but it is not guaranteed. Organic facilities, for example certified by the Swedish KRAV label, usually house thousands of chickens instead of tens of thousands. This is still large groups of animals in crowded spaces.

Organic certification is an environmental certification and cannot guarantee that transportation, stunning and slaughter are carried out in a humane manner from the animals' perspective. Slaughter still occurs before the chicken has reached adulthood, before ten weeks of age.

The short answer is no. In addition to the fact that consuming chicken meat results in more animal deaths compared to other common meat production, it also has a relatively large climate impact compared to plant-based alternatives. Eating plant-based is always more animal-friendly, and also often more climate-friendly.

• Chicken production generates up to ten times more greenhouse gas emissions than equivalent plant-based protein-rich alternatives.(1, 2)
• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, emissions from chickens can be assumed to be higher than those from small ruminants, since there are so many of them and they consume food that humans could have eaten directly.(3)
• The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has stated in a report that there is no climate-friendly aspect to chicken production unless more environmentally friendly, locally produced feed starts being used.(1)
• 80% of the chicken industry's climate emissions come from feed production.(4) Fast-growing chickens consume up to four kilograms of nutritious feed for every kilogram of meat produced.(5, 6) The feed includes soy and grains that could have been used directly for human consumption. It is more efficient to feed people with cultivated food rather than through using chickens.(1, 7, 8)
• Soy from South America, which makes up to 20 % of chicken feed,(5) is often grown in unsustainable monocultures.(4) According to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the number of chickens in the EU needs to be reduced by half to decrease the unsustainable import of soy feed.(9)

Sources:

1. Naturvårdsverket (2011) Köttkonsumtionens klimatpåverkan – Drivkrafter och styrmedel. Rapport 6456.
2. Ripple W.J. et al. (2014) Ruminants, climate change and climate policy. Nature Climate Change 4(1): 2–5.
3. Gerber P.J. et al. (2013) Tackling climate change through livestock – a global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.
4. MacLeod M. et al. (2013) Greenhouse gas emissions from pig and chicken supply chains – A global life cycle assessment. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.
5. Cederberg C. et al. (2009) Greenhouse gas emissions from Swedish production of meat, milk and eggs 1990 and 2005. SIK-report no. 793. SIK – The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology.
6. Piestun Y. et al. (2013) Thermal manipulations during broiler incubation alter performance of broilers to 70 days of age. Poultry science 92(5): 1155–1163.
7. UNSCN (2017) Sustainable diets for healthy people and a healthy planet. Discussion Paper.
8. Friel S. et al. (2009) Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture. The Lancet 374: 2016–25.
9. Karlsson J.O. et al. (2020) Halting European Union soybean feed imports favours ruminants over pigs and poultry. Nature Food 2: 38–46.

It is not safe for the chickens, and sometimes not for humans either. National and international health agencies recommend strict hygiene for all handling of raw chicken meat, which shows that it is risky for humans. This is because of the risk of infection by bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter, which cause terrible stomach diseases. Salmonella is rare in chicken meat from countries like Sweden, because control programmes are in place to ensure that chickens are killed en masse if they have the bacteria. The consumer is protected, but the animals - which don't get sick themselves - are not. Campylobacter is common on chicken meat, and infection has doubled in recent years. This is partly due to increased chicken consumption and the fact that the bacteria are naturally present in the intestines of chickens, which often end up on the meat at slaughter. Bacteria from faeces are more likely to end up on chicken meat than on other meats due to the nature of the slaughter process. More water is used when slaughtering chickens - which the bacteria like - and the intestines are removed upwards, with the risk of touching the body that will then become human food.

There is a large underreporting of the disease as it is sometimes seen as a common stomach illness in humans and not always reported.