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The late June heatwave that has been linked to at least 1,300 deaths across Europe also killed up to three million broiler chickens in France alone.
Animal agriculture is now considered the leading cause of climate change, but farmed animals themselves remain uniquely vulnerable to extreme weather, including heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, which continue to grip the region.
Read more: Animal Agriculture Is Responsible For The UK’s 40C Heatwave
According to Le Monde, the June heatwave killed from 2.5 to three million broiler chickens in France, with many of the affected animals concentrated in the Brittany region. In the wake of this “massacre,” animal welfare organization Welfarm called for a “profound transformation of breeding practices and animal transport conditions.”
Last year, Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) published a report on how extreme weather can harm farmed animals. According to the report, heat stress can cause breathing and heart issues, dehydration, weakened immune systems, and death.
France, Spain, and Poland are the EU’s biggest producers of poultry, together farming around 2.6 billion birds per year. All three countries were hit by the June heatwave, which reportedly also caused harm to cows, pigs, and other farmed animals.
Three out of four news articles on the heatwave failed to mention the climate crisis
Recent analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found that 72 percent of articles in the UK’s main national newspapers neglected to mention the climate crisis at all in their coverage of June’s record-breaking temperatures.
Previous analysis of news stories about the climate crisis found that 93 percent of coverage fails to engage with the impact of animal agriculture on rising global temperatures, despite the established negative effects of a meat-heavy food system.
Many people remain unaware of how food affects the climate, and in turn, of the changing climate’s negative impact on how we produce food. As reported by the Guardian, the UK could face significant food shortages in less than five years.
Read more: Nearly 75% Of British Shoppers Incorrectly Think Farmed Chickens Are No Longer Caged
‘Net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, but a boundary dictated by the laws of physics’
The ECIU’s analysis of UK reporting on the skyrocketing temperature came shortly after the international scientific organization World Weather Attribution said that the record-breaking June heatwave (preceded by a record-breaking May and followed by a record-breaking July) would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. Also in June, leading UK climate scientists wrote to the senior news editors at the media outlets and media regulators to express “concern” over recent coverage of extreme weather, the climate crisis, and net zero.
The signatories noted that, “While it is right to debate policy and implementation, coverage increasingly overlooks the fundamental ‘why.’ Net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, but a boundary dictated by the laws of physics.”
At the time of writing, wildfires are raging across the UK and Europe in the midst of the third major heatwave of 2026. Last week, France deployed nearly 1,000 firefighters to tackle the blaze that destroyed more than 2,000 hectares of Fontainebleau forest.
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