Broiler breeder chickens — the parents of fast-growing commercial broilers — experience severe chronic hunger because feed restriction is required to prevent obesity-related death, creating a major and largely invisible welfare problem.
Broiler breeder welfare represents a fundamental conflict between human-selected growth genetics and the welfare of the animals carrying those genes. The birds grow so rapidly that unrestricted feeding leads to heart and joint failure before reproductive age; restricting feeding prevents this but causes chronic hunger. Neither outcome is acceptable from a welfare perspective, pointing to the need for genetic reform toward slower-growing lines that can be fed freely without health breakdown. This is one of the clearest examples where the root cause of welfare failure is in breeding decisions made decades upstream of any individual farm.