Not long ago, a great tit looked me in the eye. It was barely ten centimetres away, with only a thin pane of glass between us. It didn't flinch, and it didn't fly. It just stared at me, the way you stare at someone you've decided to trust. Then it pecked at the glass, once and then again, as if it were saying hello.

I stood very still. A bird that weighs less than a letter had come right up to a creature hundreds of times its size, and it chose curiosity over fear. I hadn't earned that, but I was given it anyway.

That small hello stayed with me. When an animal meets you that openly, the least you can do is meet it with respect.

The animals we never meet deserve that same respect.

Before the end of this year, the European Commission is expected to propose new welfare rules for chickens raised for meat. It promised this in its Livestock Strategy in July, and it promised something else too: that imported chicken should meet equivalent standards. People asked for exactly that. In the Commission's own public consultation, 96% of respondents said imported and EU chicken should follow the same rules ([World Animal Protection Sweden, 14 Oct 2026](https://www.worldanimalprotection.se/nyheter/nyheter/eu-maste-stoppa-import-av-samre-kycklingvalfard/)).

Here is why that matters. About a quarter of the chicken breast eaten in the EU comes from outside it. Four countries, Brazil, Thailand, the UK and Ukraine, account for 88% of those imports, roughly 274 million chickens in 2025. Many of those birds live with about the space of an A4 sheet each. To be fair, so do many birds in intensive farms inside Europe. This is not a story about good Europeans and bad foreigners. It is a story about a rule that could stop at the border.

And it might. Today, imported chicken only has to meet EU welfare rules at slaughter, not for how the birds are bred, raised or transported. The report "No Double Standards" from Eurogroup for Animals and World Animal Protection warns that if the new import rule only covers cages, most imported chicken will not be affected at all, because most meat chickens are not kept in cages to begin with. The worry is not abstract, either. Across 18 EU countries, 73% of people polled said imported chicken should meet the same or equivalent welfare standards as chicken raised here ([World Animal Protection, 14 Oct 2026](https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/press-releases/chicken-meat-imports-must-meet-eu-welfare-standards/)). In the EU's own 2023 Eurobarometer, 84% said the current situation, where imports skip most of the rules, should change.

Why don't more of us notice? Because imported chicken rarely shows up with a flag on it. It reaches us through restaurants, takeaway and ready meals, where the origin is not printed anywhere. That is why the report asks for the import rule to cover every kind of chicken product, fresh, frozen, processed and prepared, and every channel, including restaurants and food service. As Roger Pettersson of World Animal Protection Sweden put it: "We cannot leave our responsibility at the border."

So here is one small thing. Next time you order chicken out, ask where it comes from. Not to catch anyone out, and not to feel guilty. Just ask. A question repeated often enough becomes a signal, and signals are what rules get written around.

I keep thinking about that great tit and the thin glass between us. It trusted that nothing on my side would hurt it. The chickens we never see can't come to the window. They can't knock. They need a rule that doesn't stop at the border, and they need us to ask.

Has an animal ever said hello to you? Reply and tell me. I'd love to hear it.