Uppdrag Granskning has produced a program about chicken breeding of so-called grand parents animals (grandparents animals) from the company Aviagen SweChick. The program shows extremely poor handling of breeding animals of fast-growing chicken hybrids.
The Bjärefågel breed raises a slowly growing chicken named Ranger Gold. We do not work with SweChick and the report does not apply to Bjärefågel. The footage shown in Uppdrag granskning has nothing to do with Bjärefågel's chickens.
Slow-growing chicken
As early as 2004, Bjärefågel began searching for a slow-growing chicken for its breeding program. The company has actively pursued the process that has made it possible to breed slow-growing chickens in Sweden. We saw that fast-growing chickens grew too fast and also have other problems that come from that rapid growth.
The chicken industry is dominated by a few large breeding companies, and for a long time they were completely focused on producing fast-growing chicken hybrids. There were no slow-growing birds available. It was only several years later that the breeding companies developed a slow-growing chicken called Rowan Ranger.
First in Sweden
Bjärefågel introduced slowly growing chickens to Sweden at the end of 2014. After more and better chickens have been developed, we have since switched from Rowan Ranger to Ranger Gold chickens that we hatch at 49–52 days of age. We account for about one percent of the Swedish chicken farming.
Ranger Gold is developed by Aviagen in Scotland and is one of the chickens approved by the European Chicken Commitment (ECC). It is a combination of a brown-feathered Ranger hen that has good fertility and a Gold rooster that is very robust and has strong legs. Ranger Gold also has very good hoof health and the chickens move around a lot and like to do so. This also contributes to the birds having good overall health.
The Bjärefågel team is constantly striving to become better. We believe that we have come a long way in our work; just like the company from Norway featured in Uppdrag Granskning, we are meeting the ECC’s requirements.
Feel free to read more on our website. www.youtube.com/@bjarefagelitorekowab you can watch movies.
MORE INFORMATION
Per-Olof Ingemarsson, CEO of Bjärefågel in Torekow AB, tel. 0706-46 19 22, e-mail po@bjarefagel.se.
ABOUT BJÄREFÅGEL: The family-run company Bjärefågel in Torekow AB was founded in 1986 and has existed in its current form since 2000. The product is called Bjärekyckling. From the very beginning, the focus has been on creating a non-additive chicken that is raised in a sustainable way. Bjärekyckling is also Sweden’s only climate-certified chicken. The chickens eat an entirely vegetable-based GMO-free feed that is mostly locally grown. The birds are allowed to grow slowly and have plenty of space to move around. Bjärefågel is a member of Svenskt Sigill and breeds Sweden’s only climate-certified chicken.
