Home » News » Lm Articles Relating To The Channel 4 Food Series » Leading Poultry Producer Challenges Consumers » Clipping Tv Chefs Put Chicken Producer Under Fire
Consumers must pay more for chicken to end the poor welfare standards in which millions of birds are raised each year, say campaigners.TV celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver are calling for supermarkets to stop selling intensively reared broiler chickens and replace them with birds reared to higher welfare standards.
In a series of hard-hitting TV programmes to be broadcast this week, the chefs reveal the conditions in which most of the UK's annual 1.5 million tonnes of chicken are produced and say they are unacceptable, suggesting that the British public does not care enough about how its food is produced.
"We think the more people understand, the more they'll be inclined to upgrade the welfare of the birds they buy," Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall said.
"We're leading with a call for free range, but are also putting a lot of pressure on supermarkets and the industry to raise the basic standards of indoor, intensive production as well."
Mr Oliver's ambition is for more consumers to swap standard chickens for a better welfare bird to protect the future of UK poultry production.
"I'm not asking people to pay three times as much, just what they can afford," he said.
"I'm putting a flag in the sand here - if no changes are made now we may not have an industry left. For example, RSPCA Freedom Food chicken is only 99p extra to trade up."
But Westcountry poultry producers are concerned that some of the images shown in the programmes will mislead consumers into thinking that all poultry is produced in this way.
Andrew Maunder, commercial director of poultry processors Lloyd Maunder, is disappointed by the tone of the programmes, although he agrees that overall welfare standards should be improved.
"We would say the truth, unsensationalised, is all people need to make their purchasing decisions," he said.
"We support increasing standards, and I agree with much of what these programmes are doing.
"But I don't agree with their method of getting there."
The programmes, to be aired on Channel 4 from this evening, look at the way in which millions of chickens are reared in intensive indoor systems, and compare this with free range and organic production.
In the first, Hugh's Chicken Run, Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall accuses the poultry industry of having something to hide. "We tried to get access to the industry, but approaches were shut down pretty quickly," he said.
However, the Western Morning News has learned that Lloyd Maunder allowed the production company to film on three different poultry farms over four days. Channel 4 could not say whether any of this footage is used in the final versions of the programmes.
The debate on higher welfare standards for indoor chicken production is nothing new. It has been the subject of campaigns by many animal welfare organisations including Compassion in World Farming and the RSPCA. Last week the RSPCA kick-started the new campaign, also asking consumers to upgrade the chicken that they eat.
There is no doubt that chicken production has been revolutionised in the last 30 years. When many WMN readers were growing up, chicken was still a luxury. Since then intensive rearing systems have been developed, using specially bred hybrid birds that fatten twice as fast, producing a meat that is cheap and readily available.
Chicken has become Britain's most popular meat, making up more than 40 per cent of all meat consumed. Many of us eat it at least twice a week and more than 90 per cent of this is broiler chickens, reared in indoor systems.
The cheapest birds sell in supermarkets for around £2.50 to £3, but last year Asda was selling cut-price chickens for £2 a bird, while Chicken Run shows Tesco selling two birds for £5. A free range bird can cost from £6 depending on size, with organic birds selling from around £10 upwards.
However, for the poultry industry the problems of rapidly increasing feed, transport and energy crops mean that some producers are making little more than 3p per bird, and in many cases are losing money on each bird they raise.
More than 1.5 million tonnes of chicken (about 700 million birds) are produced in Britain each year, and a further 450,000 tonnes are imported, mainly from other European countries, along with Thailand and Brazil, where standards are less strict than in the UK. Only 6 per cent of British chicken meat is produced in organic or free range systems.
Peter Bradnock, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, says the programmes give a misleading impression of the industry's standards.
"No one would understand from what they see how rigorous they are," he said. "British chicken is the safest it has ever been. The birds are healthier, welfare standards are higher than in Europe, and there is the lowest level of salmonella ever, compared with other EU member states."
Hugh's Chicken Run aims at the supermarkets, and Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall said: "I particularly target the supermarkets because they sell so much cheap chicken - it's right in the heart of their price wars, and they use it to try to gain market share."
None of the major supermarkets was prepared to directly respond to the programmes' challenges, or answer detailed questions on production ethics, all of them arguing that they offered their customers a choice of birds reared to different standards.
A Tesco spokesman said: "We have not seen this programme and are unable to give a detailed response. However, suppliers of all of our chicken meet and in many cases exceed the assured chicken production standard... We have offered and promoted free range and organic alternatives for years to enable customers to make an informed choice."
Waitrose said it had already made significant changes to its poultry production systems and did not sell "cheap" chicken because "we believe real value is a balance between quality, price and high animal welfare".
Later in the week, Jamie's Fowl Dinners looks at both intensive broiler chicken production and battery cages used for intensive egg laying systems, although these are due to be phased out by 2012.
Mr Oliver's view is that farmers, retailers, consumers and the Government have contributed to the present situation.
"As far as I can see, the British poultry industry is at an incredibly vulnerable point right now, and if we don't start making changes, like shopping differently, we might not have a poultry industry in 20 years' time," he said
Hugh's Chicken Run, Channel 4, January 7-9, 9pm. Jamie's Fowl Dinners, Channel 4, January 11, 9pm. Both programmes are part of Channel 4's Big Food Fight season.