RSPCA director quits over chicken welfare standards, calls certification 'misleading'

Mark Steele walked away from the RSPCA in late September, and his departure carried a weight that went beyond a routine resignation. Steele, a senior counsel who had volunteered on the board of RSPCA New South Wales since 2021 and served as a non-executive director of RSPCA Australia until March, posted a statement on LinkedIn that cut to something he said he could no longer live with: the organization's use of its trusted name to certify chicken welfare standards he believed were fundamentally misleading to consumers.

The numbers tell part of the story. Nearly 800 million chickens are slaughtered for meat in Australia each year. Chicken now accounts for almost half of all meat consumed in the country—a dramatic shift from thirty years ago, when consumption was half what it is today. Australians now eat roughly 55 kilograms of chicken per person annually. Almost all of those birds come from one of two fast-growing breeds, engineered to reach slaughter weight between four and six weeks of age. That speed of growth, animal welfare experts say, stresses the animals' bodies in measurable ways: cardiovascular problems, skeletal issues, dermatological conditions. The biology is being pushed to its limits.

The RSPCA Certified scheme badges 97 percent of Australia's chicken meat. To a shopper in a supermarket, that logo signals something reassuring—that the bird lived decently and died humanely. Steele wrote that he believed any consumer seeing that mark would naturally assume, and ought to be entitled to assume, that the animal had experienced a good life. "In my opinion, a life like that cannot fairly be called good," he wrote. "Which is why I don't buy this chicken." He said he had long been ashamed to be associated with what he saw as a betrayal of the RSPCA's brand, even as he acknowledged the organization did much valuable work elsewhere.

The RSPCA did recently upgrade its chicken welfare standards, changes that must be implemented by January 1, 2031, for producers to keep their certification. The new rules include lower stocking densities in sheds, variable light intensity, and the phase-out of electrical water bath stunning as a slaughter method. But they do not mandate the shift away from fast-growing breeds. Instead, the organization created a voluntary "enhanced" category that encourages producers to adopt slower-growing birds. There is no consumer-facing label for this enhanced tier, and adoption remains optional.

Jed Goodfellow, director of policy and government relations at the Australian Alliance for Animals, pointed out that slower-growing breeds are already in use across much of Europe. The cost difference is modest—not prohibitive—and European consumers are increasingly choosing the healthier option. Steele called the new standards a small step forward but criticized both the voluntary nature of the slower-breed transition and the absence of any deadline to phase out fast-growing varieties altogether. Without mandatory change, he argued, consumers would never understand the welfare issue because the RSPCA logo would continue to answer the question before shoppers even thought to ask it.

The RSPCA's senior scientific officer, Melina Tensen, told The Guardian last month that the organization ultimately wants to see slower-growing breeds replace fast-growing ones. She encouraged consumers to use their purchasing power as a signal to retailers. But that message, Steele's departure suggests, rings hollow when the most trusted name in Australian animal welfare remains on the packaging of birds raised under conditions he and others believe fall short of what that trust implies. Until the certification scheme changes its core requirements, Steele wrote, he would remain sincerely ashamed that the RSPCA's name appeared on this chicken at all.