Broiler breeder chickens - the parents of commercial meat chickens - are chronically feed-restricted to prevent obesity-related death, creating a state of perpetual hunger that is one of farm animal welfare's most troubling paradoxes.
Broiler breeders may represent the most ethically troubling welfare situation in modern animal agriculture. These are animals that have been bred into a biological trap: their genetics demand rapid growth, but that growth would kill them, so they must be kept in a state of chronic hunger to survive long enough to breed. Research unambiguously demonstrates that feed-restricted broiler breeders are persistently hungry, spending hours exhibiting food-seeking behaviors when their meal ration is exhausted within minutes. They are motivated to access food at levels exceeding the motivation of normal birds for scarce resources. The suffering of chronic hunger - one of the most basic and universal forms of suffering - is systematically imposed by the industry on tens of millions of animals.