Broiler breeder hens — the parent birds of commercial meat chickens — experience one of the most severe and systemic welfare problems in agriculture: chronic feed restriction to prevent the obesity that would otherwise result from their fast-growing genetics.
Broiler breeder welfare represents one of the clearest cases of a welfare problem that is genetically embedded in production systems. The birds experience genuine, chronic hunger that is confirmed by every available welfare assessment method. They are hungry every day of their productive lives because the genetics selected for rapid growth in their offspring creates metabolic drive for food intake that is incompatible with maintaining healthy body weight. This is not a management failure that can be fixed by better husbandry within the current genetic framework — it requires either genetic change (selecting parent lines for lower food motivation alongside production traits) or dietary innovation (high-fibre strategies that allow satiation without excess calories). Consumer and retailer commitments to slower-growing broiler breeds also directly improve breeder welfare by reducing the selection pressure for extreme growth rate.