Farm ducks ‘denied access to water’

Around 14.7 million ducks were reared for meat in the UK last year but only a third (32 per cent) were kept in conditions which meet higher welfare standards, with access to troughs of water and natural light, the RSPCA said.

The situation is worse than in 2010 when half the 13 million ducks farmed in the UK were reared to RSPCA Freedom Food standards.

The RSPCA is launching a Like a Duck to Water campaign to improve welfare for ducks which it says is Britain’s forgotten farm animal. With people thinking of duck as a luxury product, most do not seem to realise that the birds are mostly being reared intensively in barns, the charity said.

The poll by YouGov reveals that 84 per cent of those interviewed have never thought about how most farmed ducks are reared.

But four-fifths of people (81 per cent) agree with the statement “I am appalled that ducks farmed for their meat may never get access to bathing water”, and about the same (80 per cent) say it should be a legal requirement to provide water that ducks can get into.

The RSPCA said there are no legal requirements to provide open water for ducks to bathe in or bedding such as straw or natural light, while ducks can have their beaks trimmed and there is no limit on the number put into a building even under the industry’s “duck assurance scheme”.

Duck welfare expert Dr Marc Cooper, from the RSPCA’s farm animal science team, said: “Bathing is good for ducks’ health. It helps keep their eyes, nostrils and feathers clean. And in the same way that pigs like to root and chickens like to dust bathe, ducks like to have bathing water so they can do all the things ducks naturally do.”

The British Poultry Council criticised the RSPCA’s campaign and said its assurance scheme demanded water for ducks to dip their heads under, to preen and to allow them to toss water onto their feathers for conditioning.