Edit: I would recommend checking out the original article just for the sake of seeing the pictures of what hock burn looks like on packaged chicken you would buy from the supermarket.
My TL;DR:
"Hock burn" is caused by ammonia from excrement. A sign of poorer welfare on farms, it can be seen on a third of birds in some supermarkets.
Hock burn is often associated with a high-stocking density of birds and is a result of prolonged contact to moist, dirty litter. It shows up on packaged and prepared meat as brown ulcers on the back of the leg.
Chicken with hock burn markings are still safe to eat. But the amount of hock burn within a poultry flock is an industry-accepted indicator of wider welfare standards on farms.
Red Tractor, the UK's biggest farm and food assurance scheme, sets a target rate for hock burn of no more than 15% of a flock.
Hock burn statistics from various supermarkets:
The BBC requested animal welfare data from 10 leading UK food sellers: Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Co-op, Lidl, Waitrose, Iceland and Ocado.
Five of the companies - Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Iceland and Ocado - failed to provide specific figures.
- Co-op, which is supplied with an estimated 30 million chickens a year, recorded hock burn in 36.7% of its poultry.
- Aldi's most recent annual figures revealed it had found hock burn in 33.5% of its chickens.
- Company animal welfare reports reveal Tesco recorded a 26.3% rate in its chickens in 2022/23.
- Sainsbury's found hock burn in one in five (25%) of its chickens.
- Waitrose had the lowest recorded annual figure of 2.7%.
- Lidl was one of the stores that did not provide data to the BBC. Volunteers found 74% of the chickens they checked had hock burn.
I feel like I'm living on a completely different planet right now.
I'm really surprised to see that this tobacco ban has so many supporters on all sides of the political spectrum. I am also surprised to see so many people on Lemmy supporting this...
I'm all for making corpos squirm, especially ones which create products that are designed to be addictive (e.g. big tobacco). But let's not go around pretending that these businesses are the only victims of substance bans. For one, substance bans are always disproportionately applied to vulnerable minority groups.
Furthermore, folks who are motivated enough to acquire these substances despite bans will be more vulnerable to exploitation and adverse health effects than they already are. Big tobacco already does a great job of harming and exploiting folks. But at least we can regulate and monitor them. The customer can know with greater certainty exactly what each cigarette contains, you don't get that privilege when acquiring substances illegally. You can also be fairly confident as to the affordability of legal substances versus getting fleeced for your entire income by a dealer who knows personally just how addicted you are.
If nothing else, this is going to end up as a massive waste of time. It is a fools errand to ban substances, and history has shown this time and time again. I do not see any evidence that we have learned from history, of what we will be doing differently to make this work when it has failed in the past. This ban will not last more than a few years at most.