OPINION: Apart from burgers, nothing quite sums up fast food like the humble chicken nugget. Claire Hamlett discusses whether the buzz surrounding Burger King’s new vegan-friendly version could be signalling the end of intensively reared chickens.

This year’s Veganuary has seen the launch of a huge number of new vegan products, from Philadelphia cream cheese to new menu items in restaurants across the country. But one in particular has caused a stir after hosts of ITV’s This Morning taste-tested it on a recent episode: Burger King’s new vegan chicken nuggets.

“What’s the point of eating chicken when you can eat those?” asked presenter Alison Hammond, after trying them alongside the original chicken version. Good question, Alison. Indeed, with processed and fried chicken products now so easy to replicate with plant-based alternatives, Burger King’s nuggets should be the beginning of the end for fast-food chicken.

More than 66 billion chickens are slaughtered globally every year, with the UK alone being responsible for a billion of those deaths. Fast food chains account for a significant portion of the chickens killed in the UK. British farms supply KFC with more than 23 million chickens a year, while in 2010 McDonald’s accounted for around 30 million (a figure that will have increased as McDonald’s has grown year-on-year). Burger King won’t reveal its figures, but on the basis of its competitors’ data plus its size, it is likely to sell the meat of several million chickens a year. It is impossible to farm this many chickens without them suffering horrendously as well as risking the spread of zoonotic diseases like avian flu, and taking a serious toll on the environment.

Multiple reports from the last couple of years have shown that rising demand for chicken in the UK is driving deforestation in South America, where soya is grown for chicken feed. Last week Surge wrote about a recent investigation showing that Cargill, a major UK chicken feed supplier, plays a big role in the destruction of the Brazilian Cerrado. A 2020 Greenpeace report revealed how UK companies selling chicken, including fast-food chains, supermarkets, and poultry producers, have no idea if their chicken is linked to deforestation.

Why continue with all this destruction and misery when we don’t have to? The success of Burger King’s vegan nuggets in replicating the taste and texture of its chicken nuggets shows that fast-food chains could feasibly replace all their processed, fried chicken products with plant-based versions - all with no effort on the part of their customers. While it’s never been easier to go vegan, getting used to new foods and making different choices while shopping for groceries or eating out remains a barrier for some people. By offering people the same food that they already enjoy, only vegan, fast food chains are in a position to make a huge difference to animals and the planet without having to rely on their customers choosing the better option.

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Not all fast-food chains are quite there yet. According to one journalist, for example, KFC’s plant-based fried chicken, available in the US, is noticeably different to the original. But that doesn’t mean that further tweaking of recipes couldn’t yield a near-identical product in the future and make a wholesale switch to plant-based chicken a smooth transition.

The benefit of making fast food menus plant-based isn’t that it provides vegans with more food options, even if some are happy to be able to eat at Burger King or McDonald’s - and in fact, not all plant-based fast food is yet fully vegan. Nor would it automatically make these companies wholly sustainable or ethical; damaging agricultural practices are still possible when growing plants, and poor pay and work conditions have long been a problem within the fast-food industry. But it does offer a significant win for millions of chickens and the rainforests cut down to feed them, without needing to wait for vegans to grow to a critical mass. That is, plant-based fast-food chicken, which tastes and feels just like the meat version, is for meat-eaters. Helping them become plant-based or fully vegan - which Alison Hammond claimed she now would - is a bonus.

Of course, it would be great if many more people chose vegan food for the sake of animals and the environment (and ate less junk and more whole foods for the sake of their health). But appealing to their tastebuds and the popularity of readily available and more affordable food is a more realistic avenue for rapidly reducing significant levels of harm to non-humans.

There are other easy wins to be had by replacing some kinds of meat with plant-based versions beyond the fast-food industry. Think supermarket sandwiches, ready meals, and other kinds of food consumed primarily for convenience. As Rosemary Green, an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argued in the Guardian last year, “Do we really need the vast majority of our sandwiches to contain a piece of limp, sad and tasteless chicken? Or takeaway curries to contain hunks of chewy and unidentifiable meat?” We should “reduce animal foods where we barely notice them anyway.” It’s difficult to think of another change we could make to the way we eat that offers such huge gains for so little effort.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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