Good news so far on cruelty-free, but still a long way to go
The Independent newspaper ran with a front page story last week that was immensely gratifying, and is available to read here. Sales of factory-farmed chickens have nosedived since the high-profile Chicken Out campaign began, raising awareness of the cruelty intrinsic to this sector of the poultry industry.
Consumers were urged by high-profile chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to pay more for chickens raised as free-range, organic or under the Freedom Food banner (the RSPCA’s gold standard for shed-raised birds, involving more space, less birds in that space, and diversionary toys and ladders and platforms to prevent boredom).
Sales of free-range poultry shot up by 35 per cent in February 2007 compared with January, and sales of standard indoor birds fell by 7 per cent, according to a survey of 25,000 shoppers by the market research company TNS. Supermarkets are being emptied of free-range birds as soon as they are put onto shelves, prompting complaints from frustrated shoppers and clearly indicating that the rise in sales would have been even higher if poultry producers had been able to keep up with demand. Many suppliers in the £2bn-a-year poultry industry are now expected to convert cramped chicken sheds into more spacious accommodation.
Tesco, the country’s biggest retailer, has doubled its order for higher-welfare chickens but this response is unlikely to address the shortfall between what the customer wants and what is available. Some Tesco shoppers have abandoned the supermarket completely because of its against-the-trend decision recently to run with an offer on standard birds for just £1.99 while defending the cruel practices involved in their rearing by spuriously arguing it is giving poor people access to chicken (and to hell with the farmers making any money, it seems).
Ancient celebrity chef Delia Smith has taken a break from managing Norwich Football Club to come out in support of cruel chicken for the same reason (nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she has a re-hashed book out right now, first published in the 1970s but updated to include newer processed foods for quick-fix meals). It’s disappointing that a devoutly spiritual person (Smith is a Roman Catholic—she’s even written a prayer book) feels able to sanction cruelty in farming practices. I can’t help but think that if or when Jesus died allegedly for our sins, it wasn’t so that we could treat any aspect of the natural world with callous and commercially-driven disdain. But hey, that’s just me, looking for compassion from others who believe in the Divine. I’m not aware of any get-out clauses when it comes to treating all of creation with a little respect.
In the weeks after Fearnley-Whittingstall and Oliver launched their high-profile campaign on Channel 4, supermarkets lied as easily as they ever do, stating that sales of standard chickens had held up, and even increased. This was simply not true. The new data tells us that shoppers’ priorities have shifted dramatically. Extrapolated to the whole of the UK, it suggests sales of factory-farmed chickens dipped by 10 million, while shoppers bought 4.4 million more free-range chickens. Overall, chicken sales were down by 4.8 per cent, most likely because many people, when faced with no free-range chicken on shelves, bought no chicken at all.
Fearnley-Whittingstall has said he will be producing a new TV show on chickens later this year, updating viewers on the campaign and urging more people to join what he hopes will turn into a free-range revolution.
About 800 million chickens are bred in the UK every year. About 92 per cent of them are still of the standard variety. That’s an awfully large number of animals being cruelly treated every single day. It will only stop when you make it stop. Don’t buy and there’s simply no market incentive to abuse the chickens in this way, and the industry will have to change if it wants to continue to make money.
tags: animal cruelty, Channel 4, chickens, documentaries, factory farming, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, intensive farming, Jamie Oliver
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