January 20, 2008
Fowl Facts
I was able to get my hands on a copy of Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, a show hat Jamie Oliver spearheaded to discuss the issues of where the British public gets their chicken and eggs. While it had some disturbing bits to it (like “dispatching” the male chicks by suffocation, to show what happens in the egg laying industry) I think in today’s world of mass media, it often takes shock and awe for something to sink in.
He showed footage from a large scale egg production plant. These poor, mangy birds shoved in four to a cage with no sunlight or room to move can hardly be called animals. They are treated as machines, as manufacturing plants. The good news is that Britain is banning the traditional cage by 2012. The new cage is only mildly better. It will have more room (but more chickens), perches, and astroturf “nests.” The theory is that while still a cage, the chickens will be able to live somewhat more normally.
Jamie was careful to not lay blame on farmers, or even solely on supermarkets. No, he knows that to make a change the consumers need to speak up and be willing to pay 9p more for better welfare. It made me remember, in this freezing cold weather, why Rich and I are trying our hand at being chicken farmers. We know our chickens have the best care we’re able to give them.
The meat producing industry was not forgotten. Showcasing the common fast-growing broiler hen, he asked his audience how old they thought their meat birds were at “harvest.” Most answered six months to a year. The shock was audible when he said it took only 39 days for these birds to turn into the 2 for £5 birds at the market. (That’s about $5/bird.)
While these birds do grow the fabulous large breasts we consumers are enamored by, they do so at the detriment of their own health. Often they are unable to move more than a foot or two at a time, weighed down by their own meat. They have been bred to gorge, grow, and die. Jamie visited a farmer who grows meat birds to both the industry standard and separately to the RSPCA “Freedom Food” standards. The “free” chickens cost about £1 more at market but are a slower growing breed that can remain more active. They are less crowded, provided with perches, and even had little soccer balls with which to play. Mortality in the freedom pen is 45% less.
There is one fact in particular that I hope hits home for the consumers watching the show. Of that £2.50 ($5) bird they bring home for a Sunday roast, only 3p ($.06) ends up back in the farmer’s pocket. That’s just a downright shame. It’s $1.99/lb for a whole 100% vegetarian fed “Smart Chicken” at Byerly’s. Or it’s $4.39/lb for the Organic “Smart Chicken.” The Smart Chicken birds are going to come here from Iowa, Nebraska, or Missouri. Though the Organic bird is supposedly free-range, note that the website says “access to natural outdoor environment” but this often just means there’s a small door in the corner that the chickens CAN go out of but rarely do.
No, I prefer to keep my money closer to home by buying chicken from the Whole Farm Coop. $3.39/lb for a free-range chicken that probably really was free-range. How do I know this? Because the Coop has strict standards. And even better? Last summer one of the farmers had an open house of sorts, and we drove up to see what it was all about. More of my dollars spent make it into the pockets of those local farmers and back into the communities and sustainable farming.
To sum up, I think it comes down to a few basic things for me. This is food we’re talking about. Food that is meant to fill us, satisfy us, and nourish us. Do I really want the food going into my body to come from the cheapest common denominator? Surely I deserve to eat food that was raised with care and caution. Surely we should be as picky about our food as we are about our medicines, both exist to make and keep us healthy. Surely we want to know our food was seen as a living, worthy animal instead of a machine or a product.
Making these choices may cost a few extra dollars on the front end, but I truly believe it will save us our health in the long run.
