Livestock in UK Law

Approximately 44 billion broiler chickens are reared worldwide each year. There are two groups of broiler chickens: ordinary broilers, reared for their meat, and the breeding flock, whose role it is to produce the chicks which will be killed for their meat. In 2002 the United Kingdom reared approximately 810,000,000 broilers for meat and approximately 680,000,000 female breeder chicks.

Nearly all broilers reared in the United Kingdom are kept in factory farms. Broiler chickens reared for their meat reach their slaughter weight, typically around 2 kg, within about 40 days of being hatched. They would not reach adulthood until about 18 to 24 weeks of age. Broilers are thus very young animals for the whole of their fast-growing period. By selective breeding, the length of time which broiler chicks take to grow to 2 kg has been approximately halved in the last 30 years.

Both male and female breeders are subject to a restricted feeding regime for their first few weeks of life – about 20 days to the point of lay. This is important to the industry for if female broiler breeders are fed ad libitum then egg production and hatchability are poor and mortality is high. Feed restriction controls ovulation rate and restores normal function to the reproductive process.

It does not seem to me that the paradigm of a chicken being in a state of good health is that it should be fed ad libitum. He takes the line on the graph in Mr Hocking's report as indicative of the margin of difference. He points to this as an indication of the degree of hunger being inflicted by the regime of restricted feeding. As with humans, to eat as much as they want is not what they need to achieve a state of well-being and, importantly, it is almost certain to induce the opposite.

The definition may, of course, be wide enough to include other buildings, such as a broiler house, and if it is, effect must be given to the language, But the clear impression which I receive from the statutory language is that the buildings exempted were to be ancillary or complementary to the agricultural purpose of the land, and not vice vorsa. In the, present case If one begins with the land, one finds there Is no land upon which poultry farming is carried on.

It is to be noted that a prescriptive right arises where there has been user as of right in which the servient owner has, with the requisite degree of knowledge (which is not an issue in the present case), acquiesced. Therefore mere acquiescence in or tolerance of the user by the servient owner cannot prevent the user being user as of right for purposes of prescription.