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Feathers fly over the £2 chicken that came home to roost
The £2 chicken might turn out to have been a turning point. It seemed like a good idea when Asda put it on offer, last summer, in the war for the custom of the careful shopper.
But everyone, from farmers to food snobs, said it was an unhealthy price.
Now it is being widely quoted as a low point of the modern food business, in a campaign to persuade us all to turn our backs on bargains like it and insist on paying three times as much.
The big guns open up tonight, on Channel 4, with the start of a three-night series of programmes showing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall testing different methods of rearing chickens and trying to persuade everyone in his adopted home town – Axminster, Devon – to vote through their pockets for the less intensive methods. By the end, he has to acknowledge a certain resistance to posh blokes off the telly advising everyone else how to live. But he also has some locals in tears at what they learn.
Jamie Oliver makes a guest appearance, supporting Whittingstall's campaign, and Channel 4 is clearly hoping for a political impact as big as Oliver on school meals. The RSPCA sniffed the wind and launched its own campaign against cheap chicken last week. A spokesman said: "We've been campaigning on chickens for years, with limited success, and we saw the chance to take advantage of the impact a celebrity chef can have."
They are not the only ones sensing a sociological shift waiting to happen. Compassion In World Farming (CIWF) has been presenting a series of Good Egg Awards to the likes of Sainsburys, Starbucks, Google and other big organisations which have made a commitment to free-range eggs and meat. Last month, celebrity chef Whittingstall was roped in to make one of the CIWF awards to celebrity mayor Ken Livingstone, for making the cause fashionable at City Hall in London.
The CIWF has just posted new footage from the sheds where 95 per cent of British chicken is produced and the League Against Cruel Sports is about to launch a report saying the same concerns apply even if you buy game like pheasant and quail. Nowadays, that too is almost certainly mass-produced, unless it has shotgun pellets in it.
All this might seem fair enough. But, of course, the pictures and the headlines are simpler than the argument.
The RSPCA says people moved by the Whittingstall arguments should "make it their New Year's Resolution to upgrade to higher welfare chickens, such as those labelled Freedom Food, free-range or organic". You could argue about that simple slogan all day. Freedom Food is an RSPCA-franchised standard and the meaning and virtues of "free-range" and "organic" are highly debatable. However, what is clear is that the RSPCA – and Whittingstall – are saying the basic British standard, signified by the Red Tractor label, is not good enough.
The Red Tractor scheme is administered by Assured Food Standards, a body supported by the NFU, Defra and the British Poultry Council (as well as Asda and other supermarkets). It guarantees all European welfare requirements and a bit on top, and it is as good as most poultry farmers can afford to comply with.
Its chief executive, David Clarke, said on Friday: "I have seen the footage from Mr Whittingstall's programme and we would have serious concerns about some aspects of his operation, such as rat infestation. But no doubt all you will see on screen is hens trotting about happily."
Happiness is another contentious definition, of course. Paul Stephens, 55, who has 40 years of experience of big flocks of broilers (cooking birds), in the Malton area, points out that a hen's first natural instinct is to look up for predators, its second is to find food and another one is to flock together with its companions.
He said: "It is not necessarily the case that it is better to keep chickens outdoors. A lot of them are there now only because people want to see them there. I have seen some awful conditions on so-called organic and free-range farms and I have heard vets say some of them should be shut down.
"Also, don't forget, the reason hens and pigs were brought indoors in the 1960s and '70s was to try to contain salmonella. Keep them outside and they have to be vaccinated against so much it means organic birds are likely to have more drugs in them than mine."
His buyers do not pay enough to meet the Freedom Foods standards, which require a bit more space per bird, but he gets Red Tractor certification. He has had school parties around his farm and would be happy to have them still, he says, if it were not for the health and safety complications. When he asked what surprised them, they always said the absence of cages. In fact, cages have only ever been used on egg farms and it infuriates farmers that caged birds are used to illustrate the discussion of broiler production.
Mr Stephens admits he would like to stock his sheds less densely. But that is because it would make his life easier rather than because it would make the birds "happier". Litter control – ie coping with the droppings – is the big problem in poultry keeping, indoors or out.
But like every livestock farmer, he says: "The supermarkets know exactly what the rules are, and what they cost, and they continually turn the screw for the pennies which might be spent on a bit more space. "
In short, he, too, is against the 2 chicken.
Hugh's Chicken Run starts on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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