Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tonight 9pm

[piskieinboots]

Or skint?

of course money is always going to be a factor, if we were starving (not that we know the concept in this country) any one of us would feed our families the 2-for-a-fiver type chucks.

Paul, you are definitely not under attack here, not from me and I don't believe from any others.

But I am concerned about the fried kitten .......

[pigletwillie]

Taken from an article in the Times

It remains unclear exactly what labels such as free-range or organic really mean. They often seem more like badges of moral superiority over the cheap people eating cheap meat who can't afford self-congratulatory conspicuous consumption.

Guilty I am afraid.

However, I am not so much bothered about the label being organic (lost its way) or free range (what is that) but am bothered about welfare. Any animal that is produced for consumption should be treated with compassion and reared in a just and wholesome way. Chicken that we buy comes from our local farm and costs between £6-10 a bird, they are as wholesomely reared as a chicken could be and are about 8 month old when I get them in the oven, not 36 days, the difference in the texture and taste cannot be described. I can even chose the bird if I wish.

[Flummery]

Well said Tony.

[piskieinboots]

I can even chose the bird if I wish.

I hope you don't name it

[pigletwillie]

Yep, there all called Dave???

[Shortie]

I hope you don't name it

Unless you name it chicken curry

We had chickens for a while (until we had a visit from Mr Fox) and it reeeeally changed my mind about chicken welfare. They're fab creatures with massive personalities.

But, like most people I went about my business not really thinking with my consumer power and bought cheap birds for dinner. After last night's program I am adamant I'll be buying free range from our local farm. Actually.... when you pull into the grounds you have to be careful not to run the cockrel over, lol

[piskieinboots]

Yep, there all called Dave???

and so is their wives

[Protea]

I'm enjoying the programmes so far, its interesting to see how HFW and the 'locals' are reacting to different kinds of chicken rearing. I wasn't suprised by the state of the barns, i've been in a broiler house before and knew what to expect, however, i wouldn't like to be the one walking the birds every day and culling those that don't 'make the grade', it must be soul destroying for HFW.

I also wasn't suprised that the stockman was threatened by the poultry industry, good on him for sticking it out, but there's really no way this programme is going to portray the industry in anything other than a bad light so he's dug himself a very big hole.

OH and I were converted to free range chicken well over a year ago, and try wherever possible to buy it from a local farmer, but do occasionally have to buy from Tesco (free range only tho) In fact all the meat we buy is free range and i try to buy local (beef from next village, chicken, lamb and pork from farm 30 mins away that delivers in bulk boxes) when i can. We've found that because free range birds have more exercise, they're often bigger and the meat more 'solid' (it seems to go further than a cheap chicken), so we use one chicken breast between us for a meal, rather than one cheap one each. This more than makes up for the extra money spent.

I thought it was sad that for purely economic reasons the broiler chickens couldn't have just a little bit more space, turn the lights off for longer and have some 'amusements' like the straw bales. Perhaps a slightly longer enforced growing period, and a slightly higher price for ALL barn reared chickens would prevent the sitution as it is now. Legislation would be required of course and there would be terrible resistance but if better welfare measures could be introduced, the cost of which is reflected in the price paid, maybe the great British public could continue to buy non free range? I am in no doubt that HFW campaign, however well meaning, will fail. There aren't enough farmers growing free range chickens even if he did succeed, and there are a vast number of people in the UK who just can't afford (or think they can't afford) the extra for free range, and another proportion who just don't care.

To those that buy non free range chicken - would you notice if all fresh chicken prices went up by £1? (to pay for better conditions for example), and if this brought the gap between free range prices and standard chickens closer would you still buy the standard ones? (this is an honest question, i'm not getting at anyone)

[TonyF]

We're thinking of getting chickens now and we're going to name them all - eggs, lunch Monday, lunch Tuesday, coq au vin .........

Sorry

[Nicos]

That reminds me Tony of a speech in the film 'The Culpepper Cattle Company' when the lad asks one of the cowboys what the name of his horse is....and the answer was something like " Ya ain't gonna give a name to summat ya gonna have to eat boy"


I think I'd have to swap livestock with a neighbour if I had to GYO meat

[yoanbob]

four organic sausages last night with veg and pulses made 6 meals for two of us, a chicken does at least 3 200g of organic mince does, again with beans veg and pulses another 6-8 meals, I'm sorry but I just wont accept that cost is the main issue, it may take a little more work, but lentils at 37p for 500g any one even on benifits can afford that, its a choice you make, do I buy the chocolate cake i dont really need or do I buy better meat? no question for me, and I'm a large girl who likes her food.

[JanieB]

Ah. That reminds me of the time my late father-in-law gave his four daughters-in-law 20 geese to rear for Christmas. It was meant to help with the cost of the season. So we reared these geese from goslings. One had an accident and broke it's leg, which one of my sil's set and it mended. It had to be reared separately from the others as they picked on it.

Comes Christmas. We couldn't bear to kill the birds ourselves. We had to pay someone else to do it, and this person only did it on the condition we also paid for them to pluck and dress them.

Result - no profit. Mindju, a goose didn't fetch very much in those days, it's popularity has returned in recent years making it relatively expensive.

[carlseawolf]

i personally think hugh is doing a good job with this topic and with the follow on programmes by jamie and gordon this should enlighten the public to the industaries plight,
notice i said industaries plight not the chickens as there lives will only change if the people keeping them change the way they go about business and for this to happen the goverment has to change the rules about chicken husbandry and support the farmers in the change.
the public has the power to change this and other farm practicies by asking how the animal was kept , where the animal came from and conditions they where kept in ,and also take a leaf out of the french book and buy LOCAL , BRITISH , or UK what ever the tag so the produces in this county can invest in better animal welfare as the UK public is supporting them financially .
and if your budget can streach to organic or free range then so much the better but as long as the main idea is made in UK then things can change for the better here if not the rest of europe .

[Alison]

As previously mentioned, I've liked the programme and what it is trying to achieve. There has been quite a bit of discussion at work today about it (not started by me) and a few people have said that it has brought home to them that they have a responsibility for the way in which their food is raised. This is great, it's not everybody but some is better than none. I agree with most of the posts on this site, especially those made about the price, yes it costs more to give an animal a better life but you don't need as much and pulses are cheap - was disgusted by the local who said that they only ate the breast and threw the rest away although on a factory bird the dark meat is pretty rubbish so perhaps not their fault.

Where I have a problem is with those who knock anybody who is trying to improve things, yes there will be people who don't look after their free range pigs (for example) and this is not acceptable but on the whole it's much better for an animal to have space to move and a good level of stimuli than to be cooped up in something the size of a postage stamp. Just because some people will abuse a system doesn't mean that we should stick with the unacceptable conditions we currrently have. Yes, this is turning into a bit of a rant but it really annoys me. To those of you doing something positive, keep it up, to those of you being negative - please give it a try, it's amazing what you can achieve.............

[PAULW]

[QUOTE=TonyF;159600]I think Paul has been wholly disingenuous here because in reality, it's him that he feels is under attack and he needs somehow to justify himself. I have no problems with slaughtermen/knackers whoever, it's a necessary job and organically reared animals have to be slaughtered.

Tony I am confused by this comment, why should I have to justify myself

There are, of course, bad farmers who let their animals wallow in their own muck,

There are also bad weather conditions like we had in the summer that will turn your rose tinted picture of piggy gamboling with the butterfly wearing a daisy chain into a nasty swamp and if you have nowhere else to take the stock this is the reality of outdoor pig rearing.

The pigs are not fed anything un natural. Unlike commercially (ie intensively) reared pigs, who usually live for 5 months and are fed drugs to make them grow,

As I said if you had watched jimmy's farm you would have seen him buy in a feed tower because it was cheaper to buy the food in bulk than by the bag ( commercial pig food) and as I said I do not think it is right to bullshit the public that there is something special in rarebreed pork that has been reared intensively.

They're not cheap people producing cheap food for cheap people to eat, they're caring people who just happen to raise an organic product. Cheap jibe Paul and wholly uncalled for btw.

Once again can you point me to the place I said this