As Easter arrives, we are revealing the monstrous horrors that chicks at an RSPCA Assured hatchery in Lincolnshire faced during our undercover investigation, as seen in the Independent. We covertly filmed inside Annyalla Chicks Ltd, the UK’s largest independent broiler chicken hatchery in Boston, to reveal the secretive slaughter of chicks, a gruesome act never before filmed in the UK. The company hatches over three million chicks per week on an industrial scale, grading and shipping them to farms across the UK. A short life of suffering awaits them, but the abuse begins in the hatchery.

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Annyalla Chicks is a 2022 National Egg & Poultry Award winner, but industry prizes mean nothing to the animals being exploited; these pompous accolades aid their abuse. Concealed behind vast concrete walls, this RSPCA Assured and Red Tractor approved company violates the rights of chicks from the moment they hatch. The tiny hatchlings are not welcomed by protective mothers but met with plastic trays, loud factory noises and harsh artificial lighting.

Those who hatched in the top trays of the trolleys, which held over 7,000 chicks each, frequently fell out onto the floor, plummeting many feet and leaving them unable to access food or water. Workers grabbed them without any regard for their well-being. They were thrown back into trays without being checked over for injuries.

In a shocking scene of horror, one worker pulled a trolley out of the incubator, rolling it over newly hatched chicks on the floor, crushing them under the wheels. They then stepped on the fragile babies. No compassion was shown. Instead, they too were thrown back into the trays in an act of complete disregard. 

"Seeing such tiny, young animals treated in such a cruel way was heartbreaking. The cold relentless pace of the production line is a horrific start in life for thousands of chicks. It is impossible to keep up any kind of supposed welfare in these conditions, any suggestion that these chicks can have any quality of life is laughable." - Undercover Investigator

After hatching, hundreds of thousands of chicks were ‘processed’ daily and 'graded' by workers. The grading system determines whether a chick is ‘suitable’ to be fattened and shipped out or whether, tragically, they should be killed on-site for being unsuitable or unprofitable. Both male and female chicks in the broiler industry are killed at this age if they are not accepted during the grading process. They will be thrown into a macerator alive, an abhorrent process largely condemned from the laying hen industry.

The secret slaughter of chicks persists, yet it remains unrecorded, with no legislation or guidelines in place to ensure these companies record the number of chicks being macerated. Annyalla's day-to-day proceedings seemed to go largely unregulated, with vet inspections occurring only every six weeks and only on Wednesdays, which are cleaning days when no chicks are 'processed'.

Many chicks were rejected due to issues including having three legs or abdomen problems. Other tiny hatchlings became trapped in the trays themselves. We witnessed chicks succumbing to their injuries or being cannibalised. With hundreds of thousands of chicks processed each day, they could be waiting in trays for many hours to be graded and shipped, leaving injured and dying individuals vulnerable to agonising suffering for hours.

One worker was recorded saying, “They will sort them out when they’re on the production line, so you don’t need to worry”, after being confronted about chicks with blood on them.

Other live chicks were thrown out with waste egg shells, only being retrieved if a worker spotted them and returned them to a tray. The tiny, vulnerable chicks were filmed clambering in a metal trough over eggshells, unable to help themselves and left to perish.

The rejected chicks were thrown onto rotating metal blades to viciously shred them alive. These day-old hatchlings of the chicken ‘meat’ industry are the forgotten victims. The maceration of chicks inside Annyalla’s walls is RSPCA Assured and approved by Red Tractor. RSPCA Assured has even issued guidance on how to kill chicks in this dreadful, violent way, stating it should be carried out in a ‘compassionate manner’.

The secretive slaughter of newborn chicks is the tragic reality of the UK’s hidden hatcheries.

As always,

For the animals.