New Delhi, Jul 23 (IANS): In view of the increasing threat of zoonotic diseases, an NGO has criticized multinational fast-food companies for not ensuring safety standards in producing chicken items and has alleged that many of these companies do better in Europe but not in India thus exposing the people to health risk.

Most of the chicken meat served at well-known quick-service restaurants -- such as those of KFC, McDonald's, Nando's and Burger King -- comes from chickens bred in cramped and barren environments with no sunlight and many suffering from lameness and skin lesions. Intensive farming methods also often rely on routine antibiotic use as a quick fix solution to keep stressed and sick animals alive.

"This overuse of antibiotics fuels the deadly superbug crisis that kills over 7,00,000 people a year and the number is rising. Not only are these chickens suffering -- human health is also being jeopardized," said World Animal Protection, the NGO that has launched a global assessment, investigating the welfare of chickens raised for their meat to be supplied to the world's biggest fast-food chains.

World Animal Protection has brought out 'The Pecking Order 2021' report that ranks fast food restaurants globally on how they perform on their commitment, ambition, and transparency on chicken welfare in their supply chains. The brands assessed are Burger King, Domino's, KFC, McDonald's, Nando's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and Subway.

"This year's report shows that while the hospitality market has changed profoundly since the last report due to the global pandemic -- alarming trends are still rife. Many companies' welfare standards are worryingly low, even though Covid-19 -- which is thought to be zoonotic, i.e., originated from animals and passed to humans -- has highlighted the links between the economy, animals and people," World Animal Protection said in a release here.

Global Campaign Head at World Animal Protection, Jonty Whittleton, said, "Many big brand restaurants are denying billions of birds the chance to see sunlight, grow at a healthy rate or behave naturally. Covid-19 has taught us that the welfare of animals and human health is interlinked -- there should be no business as usual. Commercial motives are driving cruelty and suffering, and this needs to end."

The pecking order' assesses companies via publicly available information on three areas:

First, commitment (corporate commitments), their policies clearly state how important the welfare of chickens is to the company.

Second, ambition (objectives and targets), a defined timeline that demonstrates the objectives, targets, and promises a company has made to improve chicken welfare and when they will meet them.

Third is transparency (performance reporting), through their performance reporting, and how clear the company is about living up to its promises on chicken welfare.

For the first time, in addition to the global assessment, 14 local rankings have been also created to reflect the realities in different geographies.

Most of these companies are showing genuine progression vis-a-vis alignment with the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) in several European markets.

"While it's encouraging to see companies like KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Nando's starting to take chicken welfare seriously in parts of the world, the results remain extremely concerning in India," the NGO claimed.

There is a lot of room for improvement, even for companies at the top but these companies need to take animal welfare seriously in other markets too like India as animal welfare requires urgent addressal during these challenging times for both human and animal health, it added.