Criminal complaint over tortured meat at Lidl supermarket

Animal welfare organisations file a criminal complaint over tortured meat at Lidl supermarket. Footage from supplier facilities reveals severe animal cruelty.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 24 October 2022

Animal welfare organisations have published undercover footage from the fattening barn of a Lidl supplier.

The footage shows how broiler chickens suffer not only from their housing conditions, but also from the consequences of their selectively bred extreme growth.

The footage was obtained during undercover investigations in the summer of 2022. Filming took place over several days in Lower Saxony, in a barn belonging to a major Lidl supplier. According to animal welfare advocates, the supplier's chickens are processed, among other things, into products under Lidl's own brands «Metzgerfrisch» and «Grillmeister».

The videos show broiler chickens vegetating in overcrowded, bleak barns and struggling to stay on their feet. The animals are bred for explosive growth, with the breast muscle in particular becoming unnaturally large. The animals' bones and organs are consequently overburdened. Pain, deformations, and organ failure are the result. All of this is part of everyday life for broiler chickens at Lidl — because even the «Initiative Tierwohl» label used by Lidl permits the use of animals bred under conditions of extreme selective breeding. The footage shows sick, dying, dead, and decomposing animals. In the vast, overcrowded barns, employees apparently overlook dead animals, which are then left to decompose among their fellow animals. Such scandalous conditions are the norm in conventional animal farming. It is calculated that around 5% of animals die before slaughter.

Mahi Klosterhalfen, President of the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, says Lidl is undermining its own credibility: «Lidl's chicken meat from ›Stallhaltung Plus‹ comes from intensively bred chickens kept in bleak mass housing facilities. This is evidenced by our research. Is this what Lidl considers ‘quality’ and ‘animal welfare’? We call on Lidl to take responsibility: Implement the minimum standards of the European Chicken Commitment for all chickens!«

At https://albert-schweitzer-stiftung.de/lidl-fleischskandal one can join the Albert Schweitzer Foundation's demand directed at Lidl. The Foundation also plans to carry out online and offline actions in the coming days, including in front of Lidl stores, where it will also show the footage recorded inside the facility.

Lidl is evading genuine animal welfare, say animal protection organisations

The Albert Schweitzer Foundation, together with other European animal protection organisations, launched the European Chicken Commitment to address the most serious problems in broiler chicken farming. 35 animal protection organisations stand behind the initiative, and more than 500 companies worldwide have already signed on. The Foundation and its partners had also contacted Lidl multiple times in advance. However, Lidl blocked any serious dialogue.

Lidl's competitor Aldi — as it once did when delisting cage eggs — was the first German food retailer to commit to higher animal welfare standards in broiler chicken farming. Other companies in the sector have followed suit. They will implement the animal welfare criteria of the European Chicken Commitment together with their suppliers.

Lidl, by contrast, insists solely on the »Haltungsform« labelling system and plans only to increase the share of premium meat at levels 3 and 4 to 30% by 2026. The Albert Schweitzer Foundation regards this as an attempt to cheaply sidestep the issue of animal welfare: »In short, Lidl's goal is: by 2026 we will still be selling 70% of our chicken meat from intensively bred animals. The European Chicken Commitment, on the other hand, aims to establish a new minimum standard for all chickens. Aldi, Bünting, Globus, Norma and Tegut are already implementing animal welfare measures for nearly 100% of their broiler chickens under the initiative — so Lidl should certainly be able to manage that too«, explains Mahi Klosterhalfen.

Factory Farming: A Systemic Problem

So-called broiler chickens suffer particularly from the consequences of selective breeding for harmful traits, from stress in overcrowded barns, and from brutal and ineffective stunning methods prior to slaughter. Broiler chickens account for more than 80% of farm animals slaughtered in Germany. That amounts to more than 620 million animals per year, the majority of which come from conventional factory farming. In surveys, the majority of Germans regularly express a desire for better husbandry conditions for farm animals.