Creepy is an understatement. The images that arrive from a breeding chicken farm in the AIA supply chain, aired in the last episode of Report on Sunday 12 April in Giulia Innocenzi’s investigation, are a hard blow to the stomach.
The videos, delivered exclusively toessereanimali by a former employee, were collected in approximately 30 days between December 2025 and January 2026 and show all the cruelties of a system based on breeds selected for rapid growth with health problems and mistreatment.
The farm, in the province of Verona, raises around 40 thousand animals, while Gruppo Veronesi, in which AIA, is the main Italian chicken producer with an annual turnover of 4 billion (2023) and supplies practically all the main Italian supermarkets for their branded chicken products, such as Coop, Conad and Esselunga.
The shocking images
The images broadcast on RAI are the first in Italy, the second in Europe, which show from the inside the management of an intensive chicken breeding facility, that phase of the cycle in which the animals are mated to produce the eggs from which the chickens destined for slaughter for human consumption will be born. This is a very specific genetic, that of fast-growing chickens, which brings with it a series of very serious welfare problems, even in the reproductive phase.
The images show chickens repeatedly hit with plastic shovels to push them towards drinkers and nests. It’s not management: it’s violence. Animals grabbed by the wings and thrown against structures, with the real risk of fractures. Males with mutilated legs, despite European guidelines to the contrary. Chickens stuck between barriers and left to die.
And then the killings: animals taken by the neck and spun around, a practice that does not guarantee a quick or painless death, but only suffering.
Terrible images, which also tell something deeper: a system built on animals genetically selected to grow too quickly. A growth that brings with it structural problems – lameness, diseases, fragility – so serious that the breeders themselves are subjected to food restriction to avoid collapsing.
Cannibalization
Dozens of animals with open wounds, especially on their bellies and wings, are cannibalized by others while they are still alive. It’s not an exception. It is a direct consequence of stress, hunger, the conditions in which they are forced to live.
They are rare images: the first in Italy, among the very few in Europe, to show what happens in the “reproducers” phase, the invisible one of the supply chain from which everything else is born.
The studies
According to a recent scientific opinion from EFSA, what happens in intensive chicken farming is not an exception, but a direct consequence of the system. In fact, in breeding chickens, food restriction can reach up to 20-25% compared to what they would eat naturally. Therefore, chronic, continuous and inevitable hunger.
And when an animal lives in a constant state of hunger, behavior changes. Chickens start pecking at anything that looks like food: feathers, skin, open wounds. This is how we arrive at episodes of cannibalism like those documented in the images. Added to this is another level, even more serious: the health level. The scenes show rotting carcasses left among living animals, a huge breach of hygiene and biosecurity rules. Bodies that become real reservoirs of pathogens, increasing the risk of spreading diseases within farms.
As Simone Montuschi, president ofessereanimali, points out, this is an unacceptable situation, especially considering the economic weight of the chicken supply chain in Italy. Sick animals left without care, unable to even eat or drink due to ailments such as wry neckwho should be isolated and cared for, or put down to avoid prolonged suffering. Instead they remain there, worsening, invisible.
And the problem is that all this does not stop at animal welfare, but reaches the final product. Our.
Other studies have highlighted how many chicken products show clear signs of growing too quickly, such as the so-called white striping: white streaks on the chest due to infiltration of fat and scar tissue. The numbers speak for themselves: this condition affects between 50% and 90% of fast-growing chickens, those that dominate the intensive farms from which around 9 out of 10 chickens in Italy come. Chickens raised in sheds with tens of thousands of individuals, slaughtered in just 30-40 days. Speed and quantity, first of all.
The result? Meat with more fat (up to +224% according to some studies) and less protein. Less quality, more compromises. Yet, an alternative exists. Switch to slower growing breeds, as indicated by EFSA and foreseen by the European standard of the European Chicken Commitment, already adopted by hundreds of companies in Europe.
Thanks to the courage of a former employee, viewers were able to see with their own eyes what happens in the supply chain of one of the chicken meat giants that also supplies Coop – concludes Montuschi. We can no longer accept that the industry looks the other way, companies like Coop, which declare themselves attentive to animal welfare, must distance themselves from this system. Coop has the power to change this situation, switch to slow-growing breeds and reject a production model based on unspeakable suffering that generates inferior quality meat: the world of Italian large-scale retail trade must align itself with competitors in France, Germany, Denmark and Norway who have already adopted company policies in line with the requests of the European Chicken Commitment, eliminating these poor animals from their supply chains, genetically forced into an atrocious life that no sentient being deserves to live.
