Home » News » Lm Articles Relating To The Channel 4 Food Series » Clipping Call For Poultry Price Rise To Meet Welfare Demands » Clipping Driving The Campaign To Get Better Welfare For Chickens
Poultry farming went under the spotlight this week as celebrities and animal welfare charities began high-profile campaigns calling for better living conditions for the millions of chickens reared in the UK every year. With public opinion building, farmers are coming under growing pressure to change how they produce poultry. JACK DAVIES reports.
JAMIE Oliver has called on the public to ‘buy British and buy better welfare’ when it comes to chicken as he began his latest campaign to change how poultry is produced in the UK.
Talking to Farmers Guardian about his latest show Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, he called on the supermarkets and the public to take action to make sure that chickens produced in the UK are done so to the highest welfare standards.
“Supermarkets, farmers and the public are all involved and we all have our part to play,” he said. “It’s not a big ask, it’s a few pence here on eggs and a quid or so on chicken – that’s all you would have to spend to make sure you get better welfare birds.”
The show saw Jamie (pictured) host a gala dinner for a range of guests from supermarket executives to junk food addicts, demonstrating the realities of industrial chicken production.
Through practical demonstrations and discussions with experts including Bill Oddie and fellow chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, he showed his guests how birds are produced for the supermarket shelves on the tightest margins and in poor conditions to meet consumer demand for cheap chicken.
During the show, three supermarkets made commitments to phasing out standard chickens and stocking only high welfare birds, while mayonnaise brand Hellman’s announced that, from February this year, it will only use free-range eggs in its products.
However, despite invites to the gala event, executives from the big four supermarkets failed to show, while Asda, Tesco and Morrisons all failed to commit to phasing out standard, industrially-farmed poultry or egg products.
“We managed to get good commitments from the Co-op, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, but the other supermarkets didn’t want to talk about it,” said Jamie.
“I really wanted to get Tesco down there. Last year they said they wouldn’t get into a price war over the price of chickens so it was a shame they weren’t there, because I would have praised them for that.
“I’m a bit shocked that the big four didn’t show up, to be perfectly honest.”
The problem is not with the farmers, he says, but with low prices driving down welfare standards and forcing farmers to make just a few pence per chicken.
Instead, if supermarkets and consumers paid a few pence more for the product, farmers could rear chickens to higher welfare standards and still turn a profit.
He said: “The farmers with intensive chicken farms are not bad people – all those I met doing the show were charming and lovely people.
“A lot of them are fragile at the moment and have become subservient to the big supermarkets.
“What I found interesting was talking about the RSPCA Freedom Food standards. The farmers all say that the margins work, the staff all prefer it and they can sleep better at night knowing the chickens have a better standard of living.
“The campaign is about the 95 per cent of chickens sold in this country which are cheap, standard chickens.
“It’s not about pushing premium or organic chickens, but an everyday product for everyday people and to allow those chickens a better life.”
The celebrity chef has already seen success with his previous campaign to improve the standard of school meals, but he insists that his poultry revolution is different.
He said: “It’s public service, not a long campaign. It’s about providing people with the facts about how that food is produced.
“People will make their own decisions based on the facts and most people, I believe, will make the right choice.
“Hopefully the public will look for the British flag and spend up a bit – I don’t think it’s a big ask.”