Battery Chickens=Good???

[ColonelBlimp]

This article in today's Times made me absolutely livid. How can people think like this in this day and age?

9,000 chickens an hour: terrific | Mick Hume - Times Online

Sorry Jamie [Oliver], but what we need is a more human-centred morality that puts people's needs top of the pecking order. There is a case for improved production methods that make meat taste better - but that is about making us happier to eat it, not producing “happier” chickens.

My own experience of working with and killing chickens as a young man made me rather less sympathetic to birds that I discovered were unpleasant cannibalistic balls of faeces and feathers.

And then comments including someone saying:

I want food at a decent price and yes, I do not care how it is farmed.

I think a good few angry letters are in the pipeline!

[The Black Rabbit]

Originally Posted by ColonelBlimp

This article in today's Times made me absolutely livid. How can people think like this in this day and age?

9,000 chickens an hour: terrific | Mick Hume - Times Online





And then comments including someone saying:





I think a good few angry letters are in the pipeline!

Thats how jouno's sell their papers Colonel....
Doug

[tufftie]

Something unheard of is just about to happen CB - I'm agreeing with you on this one!

Maybe it's a way of selling papers but (and yes, like a lot of things that happen in the media) it doesn't make it right. Battery farming, of any animal, should be made illegal. If this means that chicken meat and eggs (or any other battery produce) become luxury items because it will cost more, both to look after them and dispatch them humanely, then so be it...they are not essential to our dietary requirements.

[Paul mabbott]

Well, in this spirit of bonhomie I'll agree as well! I can't say that I empathise with chickens - stupid things - but they don't deserve that sort of "life". On the other hand I have serious concerns about pigs (fellow feeling?).

Apart from the cruelty issues, (I'm sure Huge will get on to this), the meat is either tasteless or unpleasant. Does anyone remember when all you had to do to get a tasty meal was roast a free-range chicken? Do you ever see cooked chicken sold that doesn't come in a heavily flavoured sauce? No, because the chicken has no flavour of its own - why not have a korma sandwich and cut out the chicken?

This is one of the reasons why we became largely vegetarians (totally in the rest of the family's case) - as much to do with the foul (or fowl) meat as the ethical dimension. So yes, I'd go for free-range, organic chicken but otherwise I won't touch it. I would rather have a decent, if expensive, bit of meat every month or two than cheap battery stuff every week ...

Originally Posted by tufftie

Something unheard of is just about to happen CB - I'm agreeing with you on this one!
....... Battery farming, of any animal, should be made illegal. If this means that chicken meat and eggs (or any other battery produce) become luxury items because it will cost more, both to look after them and dispatch them humanely, then so be it...they are not essential to our dietary requirements.

[vole-woman]

That's the last time I read The Times. Battery farming's about "feeding the Developing World" is it? What utter utter tripe. It's about making big fat profits for the supermarkets and their shareholders, that's all. Really angry.

[The Black Rabbit]

Some more food for thought, from one of Hume's pals, another "living marxist", justine brian.

A bit more in depth than Hume's summary.

[vole-woman]

I posted a comment making the point about how volume of production isn't in issue in the UK because we actually have a problem with obesity, and really we need to be eating a little less and producing less waste food.

I also said it would be the last time I read that paper as I hadn't the time to invest reading such shoddy journalism. When I posted, there was a comment below mine saying almost exactly the same (about appalling journalism). Then both my post and the other person's disappeared. Strange, that.

[demicav]

Good on Jamie Oliver for getting it exposed.

[Paul mabbott]

Read an interesting piece the other week (forget where - probably in the Guardian) pointing out that while many people eat chicken/turkey as "non-fattening" meat, this is actually not the case with battery birds. They don't get any exercise so develope a lot of fat. Bit like humans really ....

Originally Posted by vole-woman

I posted a comment making the point about how volume of production isn't in issue in the UK because we actually have a problem with obesity, and really we need to be eating a little less and producing less waste food.

I also said it would be the last time I read that paper as I hadn't the time to invest reading such shoddy journalism. When I posted, there was a comment below mine saying almost exactly the same (about appalling journalism). Then both my post and the other person's disappeared. Strange, that.

[vole-woman]

I don't understand why the article's author can't see the link between animal welfare and human welfare, and between healthy food production and healthy people. Bizarrely he's set them up in false opposition.

Posted another comment, but that hasn't shown either. Neither contained offensive language, so I can only assume it was because I criticized the newspaper.

[vole-woman]

Btw, he talks about the poor Developing World chicken farmers who are losing out because we're buying UK free-range. Does anyone know how many chickens we import from Africa? I've never heard of this before, and wonder if he's just made it up.

[zharca]

Hi, I agree absolutely. We are a very rich nation and if we want to eat meat we should be prepared to pay the extra cost that's needed to make sure our livestock is reared and slaughtered to the highest possible standards.

Ok Paul, chickens are stupid, but that also means that the chicken idea of a good time is pretty simple: run around a bit, scratch a bit, live in smallish groups with room to get away from one another. Keep all your feathers. Live more than 32 days. Seems fair exchange if you're gonna eat it!

Must say that we've only used outdoor reared products, usually from sources we know well, for a very long time now. This is actually pretty awkward 'cos it rules out most supermarket products and much of the menu at most restaurants and pubs, but at least it might be healthier!

One thing that really annoys me is the "Weasel'' food labeling that tries to make food look better than it is:

"Outdoor bred" - for pigs. This keeps the mortality rate down, but the piglets can get taken away and intensively farmed. Don't confuse with "outdoor reared"!

"Traditionally reared" - me old grandad always kept t'beggers in the shed!
I managed to get Sainsbury to withdraw some packaging when they used that phrase below a picture of ducks swimming in a pond. They'd never seen the outdoors so the ASA agreed it was misleading.

"Reared to xxxco's high standards" - No actual laws were broken.

"Red tractor" logo. - Didn't break any Defra directives (or at least didn't get caught!)

RSPCA's "Freedom food" initiative. - They finally owned up that, despite the name, it wasn't necessarily free range chicken, only "reared to their standards".

"Organic" - Only really indicates any welfare standard if it also carries the Soil Association logo. How do you monitor "organic" imports from all over the world?

Those meat packs with pictures of nice smiley farmers claiming "high standard of welfare". It might be so, but it can mean absolutely nothing and still be made as a claim.

[stripee]

Battery Chickens equals Bad, but very cheap. Whenever I see those ads which rely on the word "cheap" with regards to food I feel cross We spend a fraction of what we used to on food in relation to income. Even people with low incomes buy lots of non-food items. Cheap also usually means nutritionally poor.

If I ate chickens, then I would rather have one occasionally and buy a good organic one preferablly from someone I knew (not always possible of course) or go without.

Has anyone watched "Kill it, Cook it, Eat it" on TV? I wouldn't be brave enough. Most people are kind and wouldn't like to be confronted by the cruel realities of intensive meat production, and don't have to be when they go shopping these days. But is it hypocritical? Anything unpleasant or that could damage profits is hidden away in our society.

Recently, when abroad, I was invited to a village house, and while I was sitting there having a drink, turned round and a whole pig was hanging from the ceiling with blood dripping into a plastic bag having been taken from his or her sty the day before and slaughtered by a couple of the locals.This,
it was explained, was for a celebration feast. I'm vegan myself, but suprisingly didn't find this as upsetting as an intensive pig farm that I saw once.