There's been a recent spate of programs on UK TV in the past week on chicken production, spear headed by celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall & Jamie Oliver. I missed Oliver's one, but saw F-W's, which was particularly interesting because he was denied filming access to any intensive chicken rearing shed, and ended up constructing his own so he could show people how bad it was. He also set up group with local people in Axminster running their own hand reared chickens on their allotments.
Anyone else watch them? The debate following on has centred on the cheapness of intensive chickens (two for £5 in Tescos) compared to free range. Cue lots of "well it's all very well for rich people, what about single mums on council estates" on one side, and some nasty "if they didn't spend so much on Burberry and mobile phones" comments on the other. The fact that Hugh F-W is fairly posh, and comes across with a little of the squire talking down to the peasantry doesn't help.
The Observer food critc Jay Rayner seems to imply that intensive chicken farming saved us from TB
Personally, I think the whole struggling-working-class vs facist-foodie-toffs really is a bit of a sideshow - I think the figure quoted in the the program was that 90% of chickens sold in the UK are intensively farmed, which means there must be an awful lot of people who can afford to spend the extra but don't.
Still, I was pretty stunned by some of the people in the hand-rearing group admitting that when they roasted a chicken they would only eat the breast meat and throw the rest of the carcass away, and also that F-W managed to persuade Sainsburys to install videos above the chilled aisles with footage of intensive and free-range chickens on the farm.
Anyone else watch them? The debate following on has centred on the cheapness of intensive chickens (two for £5 in Tescos) compared to free range. Cue lots of "well it's all very well for rich people, what about single mums on council estates" on one side, and some nasty "if they didn't spend so much on Burberry and mobile phones" comments on the other. The fact that Hugh F-W is fairly posh, and comes across with a little of the squire talking down to the peasantry doesn't help.
The Observer food critc Jay Rayner seems to imply that intensive chicken farming saved us from TB
Personally, I think the whole struggling-working-class vs facist-foodie-toffs really is a bit of a sideshow - I think the figure quoted in the the program was that 90% of chickens sold in the UK are intensively farmed, which means there must be an awful lot of people who can afford to spend the extra but don't.
Still, I was pretty stunned by some of the people in the hand-rearing group admitting that when they roasted a chicken they would only eat the breast meat and throw the rest of the carcass away, and also that F-W managed to persuade Sainsburys to install videos above the chilled aisles with footage of intensive and free-range chickens on the farm.