“At KFC, we care deeply about the welfare of the chickens in our supply chain,” wrote Marc Hayes, chief supply chain officer for Europe at Yum!, which owns the high street fast food chain.
This is the first line you read in the ‘KFC annual progress report on chicken welfare 2025’. The foreword, written by Hayes, goes on to highlight some notable progress: total antibiotics use was cut by 50 per cent, for example, and there were “some advancements” in terms of enrichment and daylight provision, as well as “the increase of birds raised under 30kg/m2 of density”.
That 30kg/m2 is a maximum permitted under the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), run by Compassion in World Farming, and to which KFC is a signatory. For context, UK laws permit 39kg/m2. For free range and organic the maximums are 27.5kg/m2 and 21kg/m2 respectively.
By the end of next month, 100 per cent of the chickens in KFC’s supply chain should be reared to that 30kg/m2 limit, under the voluntary BCC. There is no chance of achieving that, though, because the average according to this latest progress report, is 34.1kg/m2. This is down slightly on the previous year (34.4kg/m2) and the year before (35kg/m2). At this rate it could take another decade to reach 30kg/m2.
But that is not the worst of it – as far as the chickens bought by KFC are concerned. Two of the chicken chains’ key welfare indicators have worsened in the last year, with 30.4% of the birds suffering from footpad dermatitis and 12.2% from hock burns. The latter are at their highest rate since 2021.
Those are figures for Western Europe. The UK and Ireland ones mirror them: footpad dermatitis (31.8%) and hock burn (18.1%) are at their highest levels since 2021. “The more time we spend investigating KFC, the more sinister their ‘believe in chicken’ slogan becomes,” explained Jodi Darwood, campaigner with The Humane League UK.
Fair play to KFC for reporting this publicly (though there does not seem to be a press release to publicise the 2025 report and findings). However, it is becoming increasingly hard to believe the opening statement by the company’s chief supply chain officer.
Indeed, footpad dermatitis and hock burns are painful conditions caused by chickens lying in their own excrement, which contains such high levels of ammonia that it burns and blisters their skin, causing lesions and ulcers.
“This is even more upsetting due to the fact that these exact problems are improved by changing the breed of the bird; something KFC promised to do, but has since backpedalled from,” said The Humane League PR lead Mathew Chalmers.
As part of its BCC promises, by the end of next month KFC should have switched all its chicken (100%) to slower growing breeds of broiler that demonstrate higher welfare outcomes. The 2024 annual progress report shows it had reached 1% in Western Europe and 0.7% in the UK and Ireland.
The 2025 report does not even mention slower growing breeds. Has KFC given up on this aspect of chicken welfare? “Trusting industry to do the right things and clean up is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house,” according to Duncan Williamson, a food systems expert and former global head of policy and research at CIWF.
Indeed, as Wicked Leeks reported in March, KFC is not the only restaurant chain struggling with meeting its BCC commitment. At Burger King UK, none of the chicken is yet from slower-growing breeds; Subway appears to be on zero too, as are Domino’s, Papa Johns, TGI Fridays, The Big Table and Yo!. Just 1% of Greggs’ chicken is from slower-growing breeds, though it has got to 65% on the BCC stocking density standard. Azzurri, Chipotle, Pizza Express, Pizza Hut, and Prezzo were not even reporting figures.
Slower-growing breeds are more active, so spend more time moving and perching. This is in contrast to the “overbred birds” used by KFC and others, who are far more lethargic and suffer from higher rates of bone deformities and lameness, said The Humane League. As it hurts to move, they lie down – and that prolonged contact with the wet litter beneath them is what causes the burns.
Retailers and restaurants have argued that shifting to slower-growing chickens is too expensive, requiring more feed which, together with their longer lives, means higher greenhouse gas emissions.
Claims of fast-growing greener chicken may well be a red herring, however. The supposed trade-offs have been “vastly overstated”, Cynthia Schuck from the Welfare Footprint Institute in the US, told Wicked Leeks last month.
Schuck has just published research showing that adopting slower growing breeds can prevent between 15 and 100 hours of “intense pain” in chickens, and that the transition to these from the fast-growing breeds with all the health issues costs just US$1 (74p) per kilogram of meat.
KFC’s welfare programme has been a two-decade journey and has “evolved and plays a vital role in delivering improved bird welfare and producing food consumers can trust”. Those reading this latest chicken welfare report may beg to differ. But perhaps more concerning is what those failing to report at all are hiding.
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