It has been puzzling me since I spent several hours calculating the cost of rearing a chicken ready for the table how it could be done so much cheaper that it can turn a profit at £3 a bird just by increasing the scale of production. The biggest single cost is the food and just by multiplying the stock numbers you will not reduce the per head feed costs significantly, we know as our flock numbers have grown over the years, yet this is even more true of the table bird industry because if you reduce the amount of per head feed the bird will not grow so big and given the final cost is per kilo a small bird is clearly less profitable. Sadly my musings on this led me to thoughts of the corner cutting that I have known to go on in the past. Ideas like keeping the birds in barns with no windows and turning the lights on and off every 8 hours so the chickens live their lives quicker than the natural length of days. I know that battery houses have been found to do this in the past to prompt the hens to lay eggs more often but would this also mean that chicks would grow quicker? Another musing I had was of keeping the temperature in the barn a few degrees higher than is comfortable as this prompts the birds to drink more and adds to the weight as well as cramming in so many birds that they can barely move so they dont walk about and use any energy for anything other than producing body mass. Are these the techniques being employed in current table bird rearing conditions?
The video below comes with my 'brace yourself' warning. It is a none too pleasant filming of the conditions of one chicken farm in Norfolk and the conditions the birds are kept in, which by any of our standards are appalling. There is so much wrong with the condition of these birds I would have no intention of placing this meat in my cats' bowls let alone on the plates my girlfriend and me. It is not the dead birds laying decomposing that most shocked me though, it is the amount of chick down still visible around the necks and wings of these chicks, as that is what they really are, that is so unnatural alongside the size of their bodies. It is not surprising they have so little feathers as they are probably only 6 weeks old and have yet to feather up, in fact with their bodies growing at the rate they are there would not be enough feathers to cover all the flesh on those that have managed to feather themselves. One chick is even trying to practice natural chicken behaviours of preening his or her few stubbly feathers in an attempt to continue with the illusion of being a regular chicken.
Thanks to the work of Hillside Farm Animal Investigations you can treat yourself to the reality of Green Acres Chicken Farm in Norfolk right here by clicking on the image below...
Stunning that a place called Green Acres manages to sound lovely and pastoral doesn't allow the chickens to even see the sunlight that falls upon a single green acre. But more concerning are the following thoughts that came to me whilst watching this footage. The guy packing the birds ready to head off to the 'dressing facility' had no problem grabbing the birds as they can barely move in the first place, but some of the ones he is packing appear not even to flap a wing when hung by their legs in his hands. Are these birds already dead or near death? He then jams them in the packing case drawers and could very easily kill one, two or several in the method he uses to shut the drawers, so potentially some of the birds are dead in these cases. Let's assume he starts packing them at 7am and is done by 10am, the lorry arrives at 11am and reaches the 'dressing facility' by 3pm where they are either humanely killed or possibly as is common practice dumped in boiling water and thrown in one end of the dressing machine still barely alive, but of course by this stage some of the birds could well have been dead for over 8 hours already. Is it likely the people tipping the birds from these cases into the broiler machine will notice or bother with the odd dead bird?
Now move to the next stage these birds come out of the far end of the 'dressing facility' on polystyrene trays covered in neat cling film wrap and a sticky label probably bearing the little red tractor sign of quality. They make their way to the shelves of your finest supermarket and then into your fridge. Have you ever unwrapped a pack of chicken breasts and thought the smell was not as fresh as it might be? Have you wondered in recent years how come the packs of mini breast fillets that you can buy are getting so big they are nearly the size of a chicken breast themselves?
So stop your day for a moment and just ponder where these chickens might go next. Which supermarkets stock this quality of meat? Who puts this in their pies and wraps? Which restaurants buy a bucket load of these chicken pieces for their curries and coq au vins? Which chefs take in vacuum packs of the bones and scraggy bits from these birds to use for making stock?
I have a bet for you here...I bet some much higher classed establishments are using this meat than the ones you have just pondered. It is amazing when profit is involved and the price is right how standards fly out the window, and after all who is going to know once it is marinated and turned into tasty food?
So what are the solutions?
Well first in case you were confused this is what a six week old chicken should look like...but of course not kept on the kitchen table as in this pic..!
Secondly the decision can be as simple as taking to a vegetarian diet. But if you are a lover of decent meat products then find your local farm where you can buy their meat in the farm shop and see the next batch running free in their green acres.
But it has to run deeper than this if we truly want to impact the conditions in which animals are kept. We have to start asking in restaurants where the meat is from and can they show you or describe to you the conditions the animals are kept in. Of course some restaurant owners will have rehearsed answers ready to trip off the tongues of every waiter and waitress but you having this conversation will alert them to the raised awareness of their customers, it will be over heard (if you are as loud as me) by other diners and they too will begin to think and question the origin of their meal.
The choices are many but the decision has to be yours. To end on a Tuesday morning lighter note here again are some chooks that are very well cared for and will not be thrown into a packing crate ever.
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