PoultryTalk.com

Is it right to debeak/beak trim birds kept in a commercial environment? Is it the best way to stop feather pecking in commercial systems? What are your views?

Some info here:
http://action.ciwf.org.uk/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=119&ea.campaign.id=4692

No, I do not agree with beak trimming. If birds are kept in the correct conditions then they should not need their beaks trimmed.
We rear our birds 200 - 300 at a time and we don't beak trim, we rarely have a pecking problem and if we do we can usually segregate the individual responsible.

I'm on the fence on this one! In an ideal world, no, as stated above, beak trimming wouldn't be neccessary, but unfortunately, this is far from an ideal world, and birds which are intensly farmed for either meat or eggs, are kept in cramped, and terrible conditions. Which ultimately makes them feather peck, and this is the only way farmers who keep birds this way have of controling it, so at the end of the day, the birds welfare is only being half met. Sad, but true. It's the way in which they are reared/kept which needs to change, but our (Britain as a whole) demand for eggs and cheap meat is the problem.
JubesX

It is NEVER right to beak trim a newly hatched chick. Its completely obvious that trimming birds beaks doesn't stop them pecking each other. Beak trimming ['conditioning' as its called] is cruel & can often cause permanent pain, if badly carried out a bird will have a mutilated unuseable beak, there is always a % of chicks expected to die from the proceedure. Some older birds beaks develop incorrectly & are missaligned, these will need slight trimming for the bird to eat easily.