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Australia’s newest chicken factory looks like a modern art gallery – but will it improve animal welfare?

It is for birds? Is it for planes? The sleek, rust-coloured saucer settles into the earth, mirroring the surrounding hills. It looks like an art gallery or a high-end conference centre – an architectural masterpiece designed to sit lightly on the land. Until you see the shed behind it. The sweeping lines are the gateway to a $600m poultry processing plant that will, at full capacity, process 3 million chickens a week. Located in Tamworth, 300km north of Sydney, the new facility is owned by Baiada, one of Australia’s two largest chicken producers and the owner of household brand names Steggles and Lilydale Free Range. At its height, two lines will process 15,000 birds an hour as chickens fly through state-of-the-art chilling systems and automated packing machines en route to supermarkets across the state. The new plant will support more than 1,000 jobs, with workers able to spend their lunch breaks at an on-site cafeteria, at a gym or in landscaped gardens. Jeff Budd, deputy mayor of Tamworth regional council, has toured the facility, which opened last week. He says the unusual design creates a gem for the city and will attract the skilled workers and technicians needed to run kilometres’ worth of conveyor belts and systems. “I think it’s massive for the entire region,” he said. “The Baiada company … certainly made it look that way. Once you’re inside that main building at the front, it’s like a five-star hotel.” Australians are voracious chicken eaters, consuming an average of 55kg of chicken meat per person per year. Almost half of all meat eaten in Australia is chicken, and consumption has doubled in the past 30 years. More than 800 million chickens will be slaughtered this financial year to meet the demand. Once fully operational, the Oakburn facility will account for almost 20% of that. “We’re happy to see a commitment from a Sydney-based company to one of their regional hubs, to put in such a sophisticated [facility],” says Prof Stephen Walkden-Brown, the interim director of Poultry Hub Australia at the University of New England. “It’s a pretty big development, one of the most modern plants in the world.” In a media release, Baiada said the company had “grown alongside” the Tamworth community for six decades, and the facility reflected the company’s commitment to the city. “This is a long-term investment in Tamworth and the people who have supported Baiada for generations,” managing director Simon Camilleri says. “Our history in this region stretches back to the 1960s, when Charlie Baiada first established operations here, and this facility reflects our confidence in the future of Tamworth.” But it did not answer questions about whether the new facility would also deliver improved animal welfare outcomes. Jed Goodfellow, the director of policy and government relations at the Australian Alliance for Animals, said while the Baiada building may be state of the art, he believes “the welfare model behind it is anything but”. Slowing the growth A leading welfare issue, Goodfellow says, is the speed at which meat chickens grow. “Chickens are still being selectively bred to grow at extraordinary speeds, with their bodies paying the price for ever greater efficiency,” he said. “Healthier, slower-growing breeds are now being used in many parts of the world, particularly Europe, with Norway, the Netherlands, and France producing higher welfare breeds at scale.” “It may cost slightly more, but as their experience shows, the increase is not prohibitive, as European consumers increasingly opt for the healthier option.” Melina Tensen, the senior scientific officer for farm animals at the RSPCA, said about 97% of chicken meat sold in Australia abides by the organisation’s welfare standards. “It’s a pretty big deal to have most of industry achieving standards to go well above the legal minimum,” Tensen says. “Wherever animals are farmed for food – and they’re going to be farmed for food for a long time to come – we want to be in there making sure that animals are raised and handled and transported and slaughtered in ways we find acceptable.” Welfare standards were updated this month to promote lower stocking density, variable light intensity in sheds – to allow chickens to choose between brighter and darker areas – and the phasing out of a slaughtering method called electrical water bath stunning. Those changes must be enacted by 1 January 2031 for businesses to keep their RSPCA certification. At the same time, the RSPCA has released a new category of “enhanced” welfare standards, which are primarily focused on encouraging producers to rear slower-growing breeds. Most of Australia’s commercial chickens are two fast-growing breeds, the Ross 308 and the Cobb 500, which reach slaughter weight at between four and six weeks of age. Tensen said the RSPCA would ultimately like to see chicken meat producers replace fast-growing breeds with ones associated with higher welfare standards, but consumers would have to help achieve that transition. “The longer it takes to grow, the greater cost,” she said. “We definitely encourage consumers to be vocal about supporting this transition … because every dollar you spend is a message to the retailer.”

Nato’s top commander says range of Russian threats means ‘we are all eastern flank countries’ – Europe live

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Nato’s most senior commander in Europe said “we are all eastern flank countries” amid growing Russian threat to the alliance, as he confirmed Nato was stepping up information and intelligence sharing (15:31). Alexus Grynkewich’s comments come just hours after a stark warning from the Danish defence intelligence agency, warning of “escalating” threat from Russia and disruptive attacks expected in the coming months with “high risk” of casualties (12:42). Their assessment concluded there is also “a low but growing” risk of a Russian “limited military attack” against a neighbouring country, with a full-scale invasion no longer completely ruled out. The Danish agency for civil security raised its threat level for destructive cyber-attacks from medium to high (12:02). Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said two Polish border crossings with Ukraine had to be briefly evacuated this morning amid Russian attacks on western Ukraine (13:15), with Polish authorities also investigating a potential act of sabotage against Starlink installations in the country (10:12). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Man, 105, being investigated over murders at Nazi PoW camp

A 105-year-old man is under investigation on suspicion of being an accessory to multiple murders at a Nazi prisoner of war camp, German prosecutors have said. The case, which is being handled by the public prosecutor’s office in Dortmund, centres on the Stalag 326 VI K camp in western Germany, in what is now the state of North Rhine Westphalia. “The 105-year-old suspect is thought to have been a guard at the prisoner of war camp Stalag 326 VI K in the Senne region of western Germany,” prosecutors said in a statement. The man is “accused of being an accessory to multiple murders owing to his activities there”, they said. The Senne camp housed between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war between 1941 and April 1945, when it was liberated by American troops. The investigation is the result of an urgent, last-minute scramble by the judiciary to prosecute alleged participants in the Nazi killing machine before they die. The judicial efforts stem in part from a recognition that many of the suspects who have escaped prosecution in the eight decades since the end of the second world war, on the grounds that they were considered to have played an insignificant role, were in fact integral to the implementation of the Hitler regime’s murderous aims. A judicial precedent was set by the court case of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Nazi Sobibór death camp in occupied Poland, who was convicted in 2011 of being an accomplice to the murders of more than 28,000 Jews that took place in the time he worked there. Prosecutors had sought Ukraine-born Demjanjuk’s extradition from his Ohio home to Germany for years, arguing that he was complicit in the crimes committed at Sobibór despite a lack of evidence that he had directly killed anyone. Demjanjuk died aged 91 in March 2012 awaiting an appeal due to his age and frailty, which meant he did not go to prison. The Demjanjuk case lowered the bar for proof of complicity, paving the way for other nonagenarians and more recently centenarians to stand trial. The most prominent trial of recent years, and representative of what political theorist Hannah Arendt described as a Schreibtischtäter (desk perpetrator, or bureaucratic mediator) was that of Irmgard Furchner, who had worked at the Stutthof concentration camp between 1943 and 1945 as a secretary to the camp commandant. She was given a two-year suspended sentence for her role as an accessory to murder. Her trial was, contrary to normal rules, filmed for historic purposes. Furchner made headlines after running away from her retirement home on the scheduled opening day of her trial. Josef Schütz, a former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin, was sentenced for being an accomplice to murder to five years in prison in June 2022. He died the following year, aged 102. In April last year an alleged former guard at Sachsenhausen died before he was able to face trial over charges of complicity in the murder of more than 3,300 people. A separate investigation was opened last year by Dortmund prosecutors into a 100-year-old former guard at a PoW camp in Hemer, North Rhine Westphalia, which also held mainly Soviet prisoners. He is suspected of participating in executions of prisoners between December 1943 and September 1944. The new investigation was initiated by the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, which passed its preliminary investigation into the man to public prosecutors along with that of another former guard. The other suspect has since died, according to German media. If the trial goes ahead, like other recent cases, it is expected to throw light on the Stalag system in general and in Senne in particular, drawing both victims and historians to give evidence. Up to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners were held captivity in Germany. More than half did not survive.

Left-leaning leaders push for creation of inequality body at UN

Plans to set up a global UN body on inequality modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are likely to be proposed to a meeting of the UN general assembly in the coming months. Speaking at an event on the sidelines of the general assembly in New York, left-leaning leaders from Brazil, Norway and Spain claimed momentum was building behind calls for a standing international panel on inequality that would recognise the issue as a global challenge threatening world security. Two G7 countries – Germany and Japan – have given public backing. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, recommended the establishment of the new body in a report commissioned by South Africa for its G20 chairing last November. The dislocation caused by inequality was also the focus of the 2024 G20 meeting, chaired by Brazil. But the proposal is likely to make little political headway during this year’s G20, to be led by Donald Trump, and some countries are wary of talk about new globally imposed taxes, or assertions that economic analysis can be compared to climate science. The UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has said he wants inequality to be part of the agenda of the UK-chaired 2027 G20, but no British diplomat spoke at this week’s high-level event on the issue. Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, told this week’s meeting that inequality was “the new multilateral frontier”. “Inequality is not inevitable but a problem that can be solved with evidence, analysis and political action,” he said. The panel would not just track trends but propose solutions, though many would be likely to face opposition from multinationals and billionaires. The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, argued: “Inequality is not an abstract concept but an awful reality. It is about disaffection and whether the people feel the system is working against them.” He added: “Think what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done for climate change – bringing together the best available knowledge, independently assessing the evidence and giving governments around the world a scientific basis on which to act. We need something similar for inequality, and we need to do it now. Not ideology but knowledge. Not another layer of bureaucracy but instead a tool for better policymaking.” Spain’s foreign affairs minister, José Manuel Albares, said progressive tax systems and better tax cooperation were necessary to prevent tax evasion. The UN deputy secretary general, Amina Mohammed, told the meeting: “We see breathtaking levels of income and wealth inequality; the richest 10% earning 75% of all wealth. This emergency could get worse – and fast. The breakneck emergence of frontier technology, and the concentration of this technology in a tiny number of hands, could unleash global inequality on a scale far beyond what we have ever seen. A world in which only a few powerful countries are wealthy is a ticking timebomb.” Stiglitz, an advocate of a billionaire’s wealth tax in California, said: “Inequality within and between nations is a collective threat to the functioning of our economies, and our ability to support human dignity. This kind of global stress akin to the crisis of climate change needs to be very much better understood and studied in the same way.” Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, said the need for a groundbreaking general assembly resolution to establish the panel was urgent. She asked: “Who is really participating in growth, who owns the assets and who shapes the rules?” Referring to a UN resolution in March condemning the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparative justice, she added: “If we condemn slavery, we condemn the notion of people exploiting other human beings in order to make profit, but slavery is just the extreme condition, and as I have come to reflect more and more, the mens rea [criminal intent] that informs slavery, regrettably, is still existent in the modern world.” Drawing on the Stiglitz report to last year’s G20, she said that between 2000 and 2024 the richest 1% captured 41% of all new global wealth, while 50% of the world’s population received just 1%. “Equal effort therefore does not guarantee equal opportunity,” she said. Sarah Colenbrander, the director of the climate and sustainability programme at the London-based thinktank IOD Global, said: “The IPCC has consistently demonstrated the overwhelming scientific consensus on the importance of cutting emissions and the consequences of failing to do so. A panel on inequality could likewise cut through the noise and make the case for poverty reduction and wealth redistribution. But she warned: “We have seen that the IPCC’s summaries for policymakers have consistently been watered down by countries with fossil fuel interests. In the same vein, it is hard to imagine that billionaires – and the world leaders among them or in their pockets – would engage constructively.”

After so long in Trump’s sights, hopeful Greenlanders breathe a collective sigh of relief

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, and Múte B Egede, the foreign minister, received a hero’s welcome when they landed back in Nuuk from New York on Wednesday night – and a nation took a collective sigh of relief. Colleagues, friends and members of the public turned out to greet them at an airport where, just 20 months ago, the landing of a Trump-branded plane containing Donald Trump Jr had kickstarted a geopolitical crisis that the people of Greenland now hope is over. To cheers and applause, and waving red and white Erfalasorput flags, the politicians were credited with saving the nation thanks to a new defence agreement between Greenland, Denmark and the US signed this week at the UN in New York. It comes after an unprecedented period of turbulence in which Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to invade the Arctic island and almost tore apart Nato in the process. “Welcome home,” the speaker of Inatsisartut, the Greenlandic parliament, Kim Kielsen, said. “Welcome to a country that we were about to lose. You have ensured that we have a future here.” Like many Greenlanders, for the last year-and-a-half he said he had been holding his breath. Nielsen, who became prime minister last year in the middle of the crisis, told the crowd: “We can be calm. Our land will not be taken. Our land will not be bought. The road has been long, and it has been very difficult and dangerous.” Hundreds then attended a celebratory coffee party at Katuaq, the Greenlandic capital’s cultural centre. Aqqalukkuluk Fontain, 38, who was there with his girlfriend, Stella, and their youngest daughter, Aura, who is three, said the collective release of tension was palpable. “It was a joyous moment. It’s going to linger for a while,” said the IT manager, who earlier this year organised a protest outside the new US embassy in Nuuk. He cautioned he could not entirely relax – concerned that, after the midterms, Trump could change his mind and relations could “take a turn for the worse” – but hailed the deal with the US as a moment of pride for Greenland and a stroke of “strategy genius” from Greenlandic and Danish negotiators. “Trump is trying to angle it that he made a great deal. But he wanted total control, ownership of Greenland. He didn’t get that,” he said. Its full text contains some key differences from the 1951 defence agreement it is intended to update – for example, the US gets underwater access to Greenland and specific permission to construct a missile defence system – but is a far cry from Donald Trump’s original threat to annex the Arctic island. And in terms of tangible outcomes, the biggest winner is arguably Greenland, where it is seen as a potential stepping stone to future independence. When the 1951 agreement was signed, Greenland was still a colony of Denmark. Now, it is a largely autonomous territory that has signed an agreement alongside Denmark with the US that it played a central role in negotiating. A big question hanging over Greenland independence was what would happen to its status within Nato and relationship with the US. The new agreement answers that question. It stipulates that if it did become independent, the governments of Greenland and Denmark would “together ensure that the independent Greenlandic state will agree to remain in Nato, including by applying to become a member if necessary”. The centrality of Nato to the agreement is also seen as a boost for an alliance that was creaking under US claims against one of its fellow members’ territory. Greenlandic politician Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, who earlier this year became the first member of the pro-independence party Naleraq to be elected to the Danish parliament, said there was still considerable work to do in terms of gaining independence but that “a lot of what ifs” have now gone. “It’s a point of relief for Greenlanders,” he said. “They can lower their shoulders a bit, so we can talk about domestic issues, the road to independence more freely, instead of the search of what if?” Much of the agreement already existed in practice, he said, but now “it is written in ink” with Greenland’s explicit involvement. “It’s a continuation of an agreement since the 1950s. The difference is now that Greenland has some say in it. They want to agree for themselves instead of a country overseas agreeing on behalf of them,” he said. “That’s the difference first and foremost and it is significant.” He said, however, there were still questions about what the words will equate to in practice, for example on investment. “It’s a good foundation, but the details are missing,” he said. Given that just a few months ago Trump was threatening to invade Greenland, and a few weeks since he posted a map of Greenland covered with the US flag to social media, in many ways the very fact that a diplomatic agreement has been reached is a victory in itself. Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), said: “For Danes and Greenlanders, it’s a win to be able to force Trump into doing something diplomatically. And if this actually puts the Greenland crisis to rest, it will be felt as a win for Greenland, Denmark and Europe because then we can concentrate on real problems and trying to find ways to work with the US on that.” Aviaja Fontain, 41, a student from Nuuk, said the agreement puts to rest months of anxiety. At one point, amid government warnings about preparedness, she thought Nuuk was being attacked by the US during what turned out to be a power cut caused by a storm. “Many of us have been afraid that Trump will use force, but now I can feel relief,” she said. Now she feels she can finally relax. “We don’t have to think about getting attacked and just live our peaceful life again.”

Rebel offensive against Ethiopian army stokes fears of return to civil war

There are growing fears of a return to civil war in Ethiopia after an offensive by fighters from Tigray into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara and the formation of a new rebel alliance aimed at overthrowing the government of the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. Fighting from 2020 to 2022 between the Ethiopian army and the political party and paramilitary group Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) killed about 600,000 people. Both sides are now accusing the other of triggering a return to open conflict. On Sunday, seven armed groups from around the country, including TPLF, announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, aimed at deposing the government in Addis Ababa. Then, on Wednesday, TPLF seized control of three airports from federal police. The state-owned carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, said it had suspended flights to the region “due to the current situation”. TPLF also launched attacks into Afar and Amhara. A humanitarian source in Afar told Agence France-Presse (AFP) there were heavy artillery attacks by the group on Thursday as they attempted to take control of the town of Yallo, near the Tigrayan border. TPLF’s vice-president, Amanuel Assefa, told AFP: “We are in the situation of full-blown war now.” He confirmed Tigrayan forces were fighting alongside local armed groups in Afar and Amhara. The group took control of Abala, also on the Tigray-Afar border, on Wednesday, a foreign security source based in Ethiopia told AFP, while a TPLF source said they had seized several other towns in Afar. The foreign security source also said there was fighting around the Amhara town of Weldiya – one of the few routes to the capital, Addis Ababa. The federal army said it had killed 272 TPLF soldiers as they launched attacks in multiple parts of North Wollo Zone in Amhara. The figure has not been independently verified, and no casualties were given for the federal army or civilians. Analysts say TPLF has support from Ethiopia’s neighbour and historic adversary Eritrea, which fears landlocked Ethiopia is planning to invade its territory to gain access to the Red Sea. The TPLF’s Assefa told AFP “we have no information about Eritrea’s plan”. Asked if they would request Eritrean intervention, he said: “Not yet.” The current fighting reflects shifting dynamics from the civil war, when Eritrea and Fano, an insurgent group that is now part of the new alliance, both fought with the government against the Tigrayans. Speaking at the UN general assembly on Wednesday, the Ethiopian president, Taye Atske-Selassie Amde, decried “the forces of destruction and mayhem” and “interference in our internal affairs by adversarial elements”. He said Ethiopia had exercised “immense restraint” and made progress with its neighbours. Abiy’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, said members of the alliance had been collaborating for a while with the financial backing of Eritrea. Eritrea has repeatedly denied similar accusations. TPLF ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before being sidelined by the rise of Abiy, eventually triggering the civil war. The renewed fighting marks the most serious challenge yet to the 2022 Pretoria agreement, which ended the civil war and maintained an uneasy calm until late last year, when clashes resumed. It raises fears of a broader regional conflict that could draw in armed groups from across and further destabilise a region already strained by war in neighbouring Sudan and tensions along the Red Sea. On Wednesday, the African Union chair, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, urged “utmost restraint” from the warring parties and resumption of direct talks. An EU spokesperson called for “immediate de-escalation” and a recommitment to the Pretoria agreement. AFP and Reuters contributed reporting

Family of Iranian twins sentenced to death and decades in jail ask UN for help

The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced respectively to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help. A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf. The move could lead to the UN’s human rights council opening talks with the Iranian regime about resolving the case if it is found to involve human rights violations. The president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, told the UN’s general assembly in New York this week that the country was “ready for dialogue and diplomacy”. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were taken from their beds by men from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps eight months ago after they joined nationwide protests against the regime. They were tried over charges that included moharebeh (waging war against God) for taking to the streets of Isfahan, in central Iran, on 8 and 9 January. At the end of August, Taraneh, along with nine others, was sentenced to death. Romina received a 25-year prison sentence. The girls’ family are seeking to appeal against the sentences but human rights groups have raised concerns that Taraneh’s execution could be fast-tracked. The women are being held in Dowlatabad prison in Isfahan, where the twins’ family claim that Taraneh was threatened with being forced to watch the rape of her sister if she failed to sign a confession to her alleged crimes. The sisters have been held in isolation but are said to have been able to hear each other’s screams as torture was inflicted upon them. Neither of the women have been seen by their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, or other members of the family since their sentencing. After the Guardian highlighted the case, the women’s cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, an IT engineer who lives in the US state of Utah, said Taraneh was told she would only be allowed to eat leftovers of other prisoners’ meals as punishment. Nourmohammadi, 43, said he had turned to the UN out of desperation. Taraneh is said to be in need of surgery due to injuries inflicted during interrogation. Nourmohammadi said: “Turning to the United Nations is not something I ever wanted to have to do. I am simply asking the international community to help ensure that Taraneh and Romina receive the basic rights that every human being is entitled to: a fair process, protection from torture and abuse, access to medical care and legal counsel, and the right to have their cases genuinely reviewed. “Taraneh is facing the death penalty, and Romina is facing decades in prison. They are young women who should be thinking about their futures, not whether one sister will be executed and the other will spend the best years of her life behind bars. “They are my family and I will continue to use every peaceful and legal avenue available. I ask the United Nations to stand with them before it is too late – especially for Taraneh.” A submission to the UN through its “special procedures” can lead to a formal request by the international organisation to a member state for an explanation and action. Iran has executed more than 500 people this year, including at least 16 women. Hundreds of protesters have been sentenced to death or are facing charges which could carry the death penalty, including more than 70 in Isfahan.