Did you see Hugh Floppy-Whittingwhateverhisnameis last night with his programme about chicken production?
If there were no free range chickens available in supermarkets then there would have been more point to this programme. As it happens virtually everywhere offers the choice of free range chicken but still people choose the cheap bird over the free range option. I would have thought that it was pretty bloody obvious to anyone that...
a £2.50 chicken has not been reared in 5 star luxury.
It was quite clear from the programme that consumers actually like cheap chicken. They don't like animal cruelty, of course, but those interviewed were pragmatic about the trade off between price and welfare. You could argue, as H F-W did, that if supermarkets had videos playing of barn-reared chickens then sales would drop. But why would a supermarket spend money on plasma screens that reduced their sales?
By the end of it I felt very grateful to the supermarkets for their guarded response. It was a difficult moral position for a supermarket buyers to be put in. They were right to tactfully defend their customers and support their suppliers.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of intensive chicken rearing barns, they undeniably represent a large financial investment from the chicken producers. Their facilities have been built within the rules of the law and the supermarkets' own welfare protocols. This programme could have been potentially ruinous for these suppliers. It would have been disloyal if a supermarket had opted for easy publicity by paying cheap lip service to Whittingsticks at the expense of their suppliers.
Sainsburys have tried to cash in on the publicity by today placing adverts boasting that they intend to raise welfare standards. This is fine but if they fail to raise their prices accordingly and pass on every single penny of the price increase to their chicken farmers, then they are cheating and should be punished.
Whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of intensive meat production, intensive producers have responded to what their customers have asked for (albeit asked for implicitly through their shopping habits). Since we live in a capitalist economy the behaviour of these suppliers, together with the fact that they do it at such unbelievably low prices, means that they should be lauded as heroes. This isn't the case. Cheap food producers are usually unfairly depicted as the villians.
Consumers must understand that high welfare production is expensive and that without intensive production our dietary choices will be restricted.
Sure, my personal preference is to buy a fresh local chicken from my butcher. There is one in my fridge at the moment in fact (a chicken, I mean, not a butcher). I'll let you into a secret, I didn't even ask the price when I bought it. If I had to shop on a restricted food budget, I imagine that I personally would choose to eat less meat rather than cheaper meat. Most people do not make this choice and I think no less of them for it - it does not change my faith in the free market.
OK, in a perfect world we would use our power as consumers to make the world a kinder place. I try to do this myself because I am a soppy liberal with a guilt complex. I don't want to judge households with low incomes who prefer to eat cheaper meat regularly. Certainly a sustainable free market relies upon responsible and well-educated consumers and it would be wrong if consumers were being misled about the standards of chicken welfare. With all the publicity afforded to the subject, no one can argue that this has been the case.
I can identify with HF-W's attempt to produce high quality produce for a niche market; this is how I have tried to position our business here after all. Cheap commodities underwrite niche businesses and provide us with opportunities. He can't have his cake and eat it. If Hugh is serious about bringing free range to the masses, he is going to have to find a way to produce ethical food much more cheaply. That sort of compassionate entrepreneurship is far preferable to his preachy, bourgeois crusade.
I have a feeling that in the future our dietary options will be severely restricted by population growth, climate change and competition for natural resources. We will look back at the farmer who could produce a chicken for less than a pound and think him a hero.
Sorry about this entry. It was almost as though the blog had been momentarily hijacked by my self-appointed nemesis Stuart Miekle.
Comments (5)
Absolutely right!!!
The programme attempted to demonise producers not the consumers making the choice to eschew free range... every supermarket in the country stocks free range alternatives, everyone can make the choice. Supermarkets are market led and consumer led...
...ever thought about launching yourself into a glittering a TV series??? An anti-Wittingstall anti-River Cottage kind of programme???
We could call it 'Farmer - in the Real Countryside...'; a gritty rhetoric championed by the chisel jawed thinking-woman's 'real man' farmer... not a foppish hairdo or pair of trendy art-teacher-glasses in sight...
River Cottage was crap...totally non-viable and purely trading off Hugh's TV credentials...
Thanks Rob
Keep looking out for Pure Tilth!
Posted by Rob Davis | January 12, 2008 9:08 AM
Posted on January 12, 2008 09:08
Never have I read such a load of rubbish. Cheap chicken producers are in a precarious position where they have invested millions (much of it borrowed) to finance a capital intense industry which must keep rolling to keep the cashflow to pay the banks whilst they strive to hang on to contracts with large processors for a minimum margins. Having worked for one such chicken producer I have experienced all this, but am now glad that I am not dependant on pleasing the 'lord of the manor' supermarkets- has British agriculture really moved on at all in 500 years?
And there is another way to produce chicken with a low capital investment that is both healthy & high welfare, as the American Pastured Poultry Producers' Association have a proven model but if you choose to ignore that then you can't condemn farmers to poor margins, low income families to poor meat or animals to poor conditions. Many of us join this industry to be outdoors in the fresh country air, whilst most of us spend it inside dusty buildings doing a degrading job that is not fair on ourselves nor our charges.
Posted by Rob | January 15, 2008 9:47 PM
Posted on January 15, 2008 21:47
May I just say you are talking complete rubbish. My brother is a butcher and I am the daughter of a farmer. If everyone bought free range then the cost of the birds would come down. Also farmers can make changes to their farms. My father changed his from standard to free range. He finds less drugs are needed to keep the birds healthy and due to less deaths from illness, overcrowding issues and lameness etc it is better financially than he thought it would be.
Years ago the campaign was for pigs and for veal calves to make their welfare better. It worked, as simple as that. I have no qualms with any animal husbandry apart from chickens. Yes they may 'just be birds' , stupid and emotionless to some but all animals deserve a decent life as well as a decent death.
Posted by Claire-Louise Harpham | January 15, 2008 10:23 PM
Posted on January 15, 2008 22:23
HERE, THE DEBATE GOES ON... HAVE A LOOK....
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Community/forums/t/9922.aspx
YEA, I LIKE THE ANIT WHITTINGSTALL CAMPAIGN!!! WONDER HOW MUCH HE GOT PAYED FOR MAKING THAT TV SERIES????? JAMIES FOWL DINNERS WAS OKIES HOWEVER.
Posted by Matty S | January 16, 2008 3:12 PM
Posted on January 16, 2008 15:12
I might point out that here in my local Carrefour supermarket in Belgium, a cheap chicken costs about 5€, a corn-fed chicken costs 9€ and a free-range chicken, 12€ so the price differential is greater. Cheap eggs cost 0,10€(30 for 3.15€), barn eggs 0,26€ and free range eggs 0,39€. Divide by 1.4 to convert to £.
Time and again, the programmes referred to the price and "what the consumer wants". Actually, it is what the supermarkets want in their price war. Chickens used to be a luxury and not a cheap food option. Supermarkets forced the farmers to produce cheaper chickens and eggs and to find ways to continually cut the price. We are used to paying a certain price for a food then a supermarket offers us an own brand option for less so we eat that instead. Tesco go further with their white brands - the 9p tin of baked beans, for example. We did not demand such cheap beans but it was offered to us by Tesco who want us to buy from them and not a competitor. Many cheap foods are sourced from third world countries produced by cheap labour. The product is canned nearer home so labelled produce of eg Italy and we are none the wiser.
I did not eat chickens or any meat from 1984 to 2007 because of the way chickens are farmed in the UK, not because I am an animal lover which I am not but because of the forced feeding, the unnatural lives, the inevitable disease and knock-on effect on our health. I suffered one week with salmonella poisoning in 1980 caused by a chicken sandwich. I started eating chicken again just to be sociable but eat no other meat. Well the odd slice of Serrano ham. I am not evangelistic about vegetarianism. It is simply my quiet preference and a much cheaper food option.
The point about chickens is not so much which type of whole chicken you choose to buy but about the poor quality of meat used in chicken products, especially the nuggets given to children because they are tasty. LISTEN PEOPLE - THEY ARE RUBBISH.
I wonder whether KFC and McDonalds will now be forced by consumer pressure to consider their chicken sources.
I know millions of people are on a low budget. (I once heard the frightening statistic that 38 million of the 60 million Brits in the UK had less than £112 to their name!) Yet many of these people still find money for alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets. Don't get me started on the latter. Then there are new clothes every season, piles of them cheaply bought at Primark, a car and the must-have holidays. Very few people in the UK are so poor that they cannot make healthier food choices - like eating cheaper beans and pulses instead of meat. It is all a question of priorities.
Will someone please investigate why smoked salmon is now so cheap? It used to be a luxury, Christmas day food but 200g of cheapo Atlantic product made(?) in France now costs 1,50 € in Carrefour, down from 2,99 €. Of course it is thin and the odd bit is too chewy to eat but it is edible enough for sandwiches. Even my 10 year old's school sandwiches.
Read about Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's TV campaigns:
News on SmartPlanet about chicken sales since the programmes.
Response from the Supermarkets in The Times
Guardian article with readers' comments
Christians urged to buy free-range chickens
©Antonia Stuart-James 2008 on http://antoniastuart-james.blogspot.com/
Posted by Antonia Stuart-James | January 16, 2008 6:45 PM
Posted on January 16, 2008 18:45