A report claiming millions of chickens are missing from official data has been condemned by the poultry and egg sectors.
The Wildlife Trusts said inaccuracies in poultry data meant that at least 25 million birds were unaccounted for across Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Shropshire and Herefordshire alone, with the number potentially rising as high as 67 million, if the pattern was repeated nationally.
In its Counting Chickens – An Analysis of UK Poultry Numbers report, the charity alleged that this inaccurate data was being used to inform policies on land, manure and pollution management in England.
The charity said its study had used “numerous Freedom of Information requests and analysis of other official datasets” from Defra, the Animal & Plant Health Agency and the Environment Agency to reveal the figures.
However, the report has been dismissed as a “confection” by industry leaders.
Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, argued The Wildlife Trusts had leapt on three different datasets, collated for different reasons, to “invent a story”.
A Defra spokesperson said its Agricultural Survey aimed to produce statistical estimates of poultry populations at a point in time; the APHA collected data for anyone owning poultry or other captive birds; and the EA gathered data for permitted poultry farms.
“The datasets for poultry are collected for different reasons, gathering wide-ranging evidence of trends and fluctuations in the sector,” Defra said.
Griffiths added: “We cannot speak to the veracity of government data, but we can see when it is being manipulated, and the words ‘could’ and ‘might’ are doing much of the work in the report.
“This confection is nothing more than a vehicle to repeat the inaccurate claims about poultry farms letting manure cause water pollution,” he added. “All indoor poultry farms that operate under strict environmental permitting, and are therefore regulated by the Environment Agency, have concrete floors.”
Rebecca Tonks, CEO and founder of St Ewe Free Range Eggs, echoed concerns about the report and said she objected to the “suggestion that poultry farmers are operating without proper controls”.
“Our sector is already heavily regulated – any flock of 50 birds or more must be registered with APHA by law, and larger units face stringent planning, permitting and assurance requirements,” she continued. “Broad-brush accusations from wildlife charities are unhelpful; we should be working together on practical, science-based solutions.”
The Wildlife Trusts have called for an urgent data and policy review, reform to existing permitting regimes and food chain regulation.
The industry said more flexible planning regulations were needed. Gary Ford, head of strategy and producer engagement at the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, said it “needs to grow to meet increasing demand”.
However The Wildlife Trusts said there could be “considerable spare capacity already” and raised concerns the situation regarding planning was being misrepresented.
The trusts said the government needed “to look to their sampling and their calculations to try to achieve a more precise estimate of poultry holdings and poultry totals”.
With wildly ranging figures and an alleged lack of transparency, the report said, “greater openness over these trends would reduce the need for speculation”.
The Wildlife Trusts stood by its findings despite the criticism. Joan Edwards, the organisation’s director of policy and public affairs, said the report was “an evidence-based analysis highlighting significant inconsistencies between official datasets”.
“The evidence strongly suggests that poultry numbers are being underestimated, which would mean substantial volumes of manure are going unaccounted for each year – equivalent to 74 Olympic-sized swimming pools,” she said. “Such volumes mean freshwater pollution at a scale that is devastating for wildlife, and for people’s enjoyment of rivers.”
Edwards added: “The focus should now be on addressing the problems these discrepancies create, so that government policy is based on accurate data and environmental risks are properly understood and managed.”
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