Barren raised cages used for industrial rearing of game birds. Credit Animal Aid.

A first principle of the U.K. Animal Welfare Act, 2006 (‘the AWA’) is that it protects vertebrate animals ‘under the control of man’. It explicitly excludes any described as ‘living in a wild state’. The way this distinction has been applied has meant that the welfare of industrially reared ‘game birds’ is largely unprotected in law. Consider, for example, pheasants reared in the order of 50 million birds each year in the United Kingdom.

At the first stage of their rearing, the breeding pheasants, commonly kept in barren cages, are, in principle, subject to the AWA. The Act also applies to the hatchlings, often kept in large numbers in sheds until, after seven weeks or so, as ‘poults’ they are transferred to ‘release pens’. The release pens are larger enclosures, emulating to some degree the natural situation. At this time too, still recognised as ‘under man’s control’, the pheasants have, on paper, protection of their welfare.

About 2.5 million gamebirds are killed in road traffic collisions in the U.K. each year. Credit Animal Aid.

But next they are moved outside the pens to colonise local woodland, prior to being made available for shooting. Suddenly they lose all protection under the Animal Welfare Act! Despite their previous intensive rearing, and their release in unnaturally large numbers, they are now construed as being in a ‘wild state’. At least 45% of reared birds (according to industry figures) now die after they leave the release pens from a combination of predation, disease and accident, most killed by predators. The mortality associated with these causes dwarfs that found in any other animal husbandry system.

https://youtu.be/sPY94GcB7pw

Animal Aid Welsh game bird farm investigation 2022

The cages in which the breeding birds are kept are highly unnatural and confined environments. The hatchlings are reared in limited spaces without natural vegetation and are fed a ready-made diet of pelleted meal. They do not benefit from protection by their parents. They are not able to learn appropriate foraging behaviour. They do not even learn basic behaviours such as roosting out of harm’s way. Moreover, derived from stock bred in artificial environments, they are less adapted to survival in the wild. They are highly vulnerable.

Industrially reared game birds such as pheasants will often suffer traumatic injury and death through predation and accident even before exposure to guns. Over 20 million game birds will suffer in this way each year in the U.K. Credit Animal Aid.

Predation itself will often be traumatic. Birds hit in their tens of thousands by cars as they roam onto roads frequently suffer injury and die slowly. Disease harms, including infection, heavy worm burdens and tick infestation, all cause distress. The welfare harms arise as a result of their rearing and breeding for shooting, but those producing them are absolved of any responsibility for the prevention of disease, or ensuring birds are protected from injury or death through accident or attack by predators. The exemption of game birds from the provisions of the Act, removes its key requirements that animals kept should be protected from ‘unnecessary suffering’, and that anyone responsible for an animal must ensure their behavioural needs are met.

Even before release, any protection under the Act is much more apparent than real. While other animals reared are subject to inspection and potential enforcement action by local authority trading standards or Government agencies, such inspection and enforcement barely occurs for industrially reared ‘game birds’. The standards expected are, in any event, very low - the provisions of the Act relating to care are required only ‘to the extent of good practice’ - which effectively means whatever the industry conventionally does. So, for example, cramped, barren cages for breeding birds are allowed even though they cause significant welfare harm.

https://youtu.be/1vsfeTNK\_\_M

Animal Aid Sussex game farm investigation 2021

A further important anomaly in legal protection relates to welfare at slaughter regulations. The birds are reared artificially and often on an industrial scale. Moreover, industry supporters defend game bird shooting on the grounds the birds are being reared for food. Yet for any other types of livestock, there are explicit regulations intended to provide protection of welfare at the time of slaughter, in particular, the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing Regulations, 2015 (‘WATOK’). The key provision is, ‘Animals shall be spared any avoidable pain, distress or suffering during their killing and related operations’. There is the primary expectation that (except for ritual slaughter for religious purposes) any animal should be stunned prior to killing. Gamebirds reared for sport are exempt from these regulations.

Extensive evidence from international studies of gamebird shooting attests that likely in excess of 40% of animals targeted will not be killed outright but will instead be injured or maimed and suffer considerably. Studies include those where hidden observers record the actual incidence of injury (rather than that claimed by shooters), as well as studies that have considered the issue from a ballistic point of view—examining predicted effects of inaccuracy in shooting, pellet spread, muzzle velocity and shot distance. While other farmed species are expected to be treated at slaughter in ways which prevent avoidable suffering, there is no such expectation for ‘game birds’.

Rows of game bird breeding cages on an industrial game farm in Wales. Credit Animal Aid.

How is it that artificially reared ‘gamebirds’, commercially produced under industrial conditions, in no meaningful sense ‘wild’, and claimed to be reared for food, manage to evade the potential protections of both the Animal Welfare Act and of welfare at slaughter regulations? Exemptions have been created, and the law interpreted, to meet shooting industry interests. It is fundamental to ‘gamebird’ production that it should enable the opportunity to shoot birds, as this is what those paying want. To protect the bird’s welfare during rearing or at slaughter is incompatible with this primary goal of production. Were the birds to be subject to such protections then, of course, their shooting for ‘sport’ would not be possible. A bizarre legal sleight of hand removes protection of gamebirds from major welfare harms, caused directly by their intensive artificial rearing at large scale and killing, by falsely representing them as wild and outside human control or responsibility.