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The high-profile TV campaign by celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver to turn British shoppers off cheap, factory- farm chicken and on to welfare-friendly free- range birds is creditable. And their dominance, this week, of primetime TV in pursuit of the cause will no doubt make a difference.But supportive as the Western Morning News is of any efforts to improve the lot of livestock, raise the value of foodstuffs and promote local, high-welfare and high-quality meat, this campaign has attracted a degree of criticism, as well as support, which needs to be addressed.
The most vehement line of attack has come from consumer champions who point out, with some justification, that it is all very well for millionaire chefs to tell shoppers to kiss the £2.50 chicken goodbye, but not everyone can afford to pay more. With free-range birds costing three times as much or more how many ordinary families could afford chicken every week if they spurned the factory-farmed stuff?
That, of course, is no reason to abandon what is a laudable campaign to give chickens a better life and diners a better eating experience. But with price among the most important factors when consumers do their shopping, it makes adopting Hugh's and Jamie's position that much more difficult for the least well-off.
Another angle of attack on the two super-chefs comes from poultry industry insiders, who say, again with some justification, that if Britain dramatically tightens the rules on the welfare provision for broiler hens it risks driving a lucrative market overseas. Chickens won't fare any better than they do now, it is just the majority won't be here in Britain, but reared abroad.
That, too, is a defeatist argument but it is nevertheless true. It would not be the first time that Britain adopted tough welfare regulations relating to the rearing of livestock only to find that other countries still using unacceptable methods had stolen our markets because they could undercut our farmers' prices. It happened with pork and it could so easily happen with chicken.
What Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and friends are trying to do is make consumers put the pressure on producers, so that welfare standards and quality standards are driven, not by draconian legislation but by consumer demand and that the appetite we currently have for dirt- cheap chicken will be lost as we learn more about the often appalling conditions in which the birds are kept.
It makes for good TV and it will, we are sure, increase the amount of high-welfare chicken bought by the middle-classes who can afford to indulge their concerns. It is will take a bit more to change the eating habits of the vast majority, however. Unless and until there is widespread adoption of higher welfare standards for chicken across Europe, combined with import controls on sub-standard birds from further afield, the £2.50 chicken will still be with us, and continuing to sell in numbers.