The ‘Supermarket Franken-Chickens'

Fast-growing birds live in agony and filth | Secret probe finds 100s sick and injured | Morrisons accused of welfare hypocrisy

- Nada Farhoud

Chickens reared for Morrisons spend the last days of their miserable, short lives in “extreme” pain packed in overcrowded farms, an undercover probe has found.

The birds – dubbed “Frankenchickens” by campaigners – are bred to grow unnaturally fast.

They are then slaughtered at around 35 days old to help feed our billion chickens-a-year habit. Producer Cranswick rears them for its slaughterhouse in Yaxley, near Ipswich in Suffolk.

It provides meat for Morrisons’ “Butcher’s on Market Street” range, marketed as “welfare assured”.

Campaigners have accused the supermarket chain of hypocrisy over its claims to “take animal welfare seriously”.

Investigators for animal rights group Open Cages found chickens unable to walk at four farms in Norfolk and Suffolk.

They filmed many birds with deformed legs and told how they saw some that “frantically flapped their wings before collapsing in pain”.