WOW!

Thanks largely in part to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘Chicken Out’ campaign on his Chan4 programme ‘Hugh’s Chicken Run‘, according to The Independent, sales of broiler chicken are down by 10 million. That’s an incredible amount. Still a long way to go, but what a start! It seems the move to more people buying free range has not been a kneejerk reaction or a flash in the pan, the change appears to be here to stay. Result!

In order for consumers to really make a choice about what they buy, they need to know all the facts, and see the evidence. That’s something you just don’t get from supermarkets. I do wish they’d try and source their meat more locally, so that not only butchers and farm shops are the ones to tell you where your meat comes from and the conditions it was reared in. People should care about the life of the animal before they eat it, they should give thanks for it’s life and what it’s providing them with but somehow our culture has removed itself from the reality of what eating meat really means.

Rich and I went to the cinema last night, and walked past a KFC that even at gone 10pm was still pretty full. Silly people stuffing their faces, not a care in the world. I wish I was brave enough to engage them in conversation about it (I resort to death stares and loud passing comments before I run off), but I think they’d just think I was attacking them rather than being constructive.

The Independent thought that Tesco’s £1.99 chicken was in part an attempt to try and clear the surplus broiler (’standard’) chickens from their shelves and warehouses. I can’t help but feel it was an underhand attempt by Tesco to stick two fingers up to the consumer behind their backs, and assert their control over consumer choice. As if to you “you think you can implement change, but you cannot, we’ll always do what we want, we control the market and the demand for certain products”.

The thing is we have a generation that’s so far removed from the realities of the meat industry and all that it entails, so should they be trusted to make a properly informed decision regarding their meat, and more to the point, do they really care? This is why in some ways, I think the Government forcing their hand and creating legislation to improve the welfare of farm animals should be a priority. Consumer choice is limited by the monopolising Powers That Be (Tesco et al) and their own ethics. Legislation by the government may lead to them being called a ‘Nanny State’, but let’s face it, that’s because some people do need nannying.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Sustainability, hens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.