In a new video, the NGO L214 focuses on collecting chickens, an essential step for the chickens to arrive on our plates, but which is not without suffering for the animals as for the workers.
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/ Photo L214
The NGO L214 continues to describe, in its punchy videos, behind the scenes of intensive farming.
The focus this Thursday is on a little-known profession: that of poultry collector.
The job ?
Recover animals from the ground of livestock buildings to deposit them in crates loaded on trucks which immediately take the road to the slaughterhouse.
Far from being easy when it comes to collecting 20,000 chickens in the dark, as fast as possible.
Low wages, high speeds, struggling animals ... A whistleblower recounts this ordeal, as much for the workers as for the chickens.
“We make sort of bouquets of poultry… We collect four to five per hand.
“This Thursday, the L214 association publishes a new video, shot with a hidden camera, to denounce the failings of industrial breeding.
This time the focus is on the intensive rearing of broilers [raised for their meat].
More precisely on a stage that we hardly think about once the chicken arrives on our plates: the gathering of poultry.
The job consists of recovering the animals from the ground of livestock buildings to deposit them in crates, then loaded on trucks which immediately take the road to the slaughterhouse.
This was the work of the "whistleblower" behind the images compiled by L214 in this new video.
“For a little over a month,” says Brian Mordasini, responsible for agri-food relations within the NGO.
First problem: the salary
Difficult to hold on anymore?
What he says is not encouraging in any case.
It is already a question of salary.
“When you're a poultry collector, you don't earn a good living,” he already says.
In 2005, the director Jean-Jacques Rault, a former farmer, already noted this in a documentary for which he had followed the nights of poultry collectors in Poitou-Charentes.
“At night, because that's when they operate, when the birds are sleeping,” he explains.
“For a long time, the collection of poultry was done by the peasants themselves who helped each other from one farm to another,” he explains.
But regularly devoting nights to it quickly became untenable for them as agriculture industrialized, so that specialized companies were created.
"
It was for one of them that the poultry collectors followed by Jean-Jacques Rault worked and for yet another, the whistleblower of the L214 video was employed.
“Around 9 pm, they leave from farm to farm until the morning, some nights traveling over 400 km,” says Jean-Jacques Rault.
Up to 60 hours per week for a gross monthly salary of 970 euros, only the time spent collecting poultry being paid.
No transportation to get there.
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"Collect over 20,000 chickens in less than four hours"
Not much has changed in fifteen years judging by this new video from L214.
“Even if we work every night, at the end of the day, we don't have more than 800 euros”, says the former poultry collector, who also indicates that he was not paid until the moment when he entered the breeding.
To low wages, we must add working in the dark, the smell and dirt of farm buildings, the fatigue of miles to swallow to get from one henhouse to another.
Not to mention the high rates imposed to collect the chickens ... The hidden camera images published by L214 were thus shot at the end of September in a broiler farm in Yonne on behalf of DUC.
"A representative farm of what is an intensive French broiler breeding", specifies L214.
That night, the whistleblower explains having had to collect, with his colleagues, more than 20,000 chickens in less than four hours.
“The goal is to go very fast,” he says.
We collect five chickens at once and slam them into a plastic crate.
"Snap", he insists, "we don't have time to drop them off."
Working conditions that have repercussions on animal welfare
Here again, these same high speeds were mentioned in the documentary by Jean-Jacques Rault, “distressed” to see that nothing has changed.
“I had made the choice to concentrate on the social aspect, launches the director.
I wanted to tell about these people who are the underclass of an industry that has learned to optimize profits.
In the same way as breeders, who are very often service providers on behalf of brands, or even slaughterhouse employees.
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L214, an animal rights NGO, also establishes a bridge between these “deplorable” working conditions and the animal suffering they cause.
Here again, it is the former poultry collector who speaks about it the best.
“The job is violent,” he describes.
Just carrying the chickens upside down (they are caught by the legs) makes them giggle and struggle.
He also mentions the violence he has sometimes observed on chickens.
"It can happen to throw chickens on the ground, to send punches, kicks", he explains, inviting immediately to put these acts in their context: "we work in the dark , we are tired, we have to go fast, we stink, we are hot… ”.
Even without this violence, collecting poultry also regularly causes fractures, dislocations of the legs and wings, as well as intramuscular hemorrhages in these animals, wrote, in 2009, some twenty researchers in a collective expert review conducted by INRAE. on animal pains in farms.
"The urgency to review the density of animals in intensive farms"
So what to do?
There is indeed an alternative to manual collection.
“Using reapers,” confirms Brian Mordasini.
The chickens are then sucked onto conveyor belts, then propelled and crammed into transport crates.
Frankly, the technique isn't much better when it comes to animal welfare.
L214 had already devoted a video survey to this method already in one of the farms working on behalf of DUC, and already in Yonne as well.
"This system is often more expensive than manual collection and has finally developed relatively little in France", adds Jean-Jacques Rault.
For Brian Mordasini, the challenge then is much more to reduce the density of animals in intensive farming.
"On these farms, it is very often around 42 kg per m², or 22 chickens per m²," he says.
A good start would be to reduce this density to 33 kg per m², or 16 chickens per m².
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A charter to move the lines
This is one of the measures of the European Chicken Commitment (ECC), a list of breeding and slaughtering criteria that around thirty European NGOs, including L214, are trying to get adopted by food companies.
From mass distribution to producers, including brands and slaughterhouses.
"This drop in density would not only facilitate the collection of chickens, but also make their short life in these farms - of the order of 35 days - a little less unpleasant", continues Brian Mordasini.
Among other criteria, there is also that of giving chickens more time to grow.
“Everything is done so that they gain muscle as quickly as possible, so that the legs can not follow and that many of these chickens limp or can not move,” explains Brian Mordasini.
The charter also requires providing access to natural light "if only from windows" - in livestock buildings or installing arrangements, such as pecking blocks, so that chickens avoid biting each other. them… "Not a sea to drink," estimates the L214 agrifood relations manager.
However, this charter has so far only been adopted by a minority of players ”.
In France, 800 million chickens are raised and slaughtered for their meat, "of which 83% are under conditions similar to those shown in the video we publish this Thursday," adds the NGO.
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