In this hard-hitting series, Hugh learns about the reality of modern poultry production and sets up his own intensive farm – revealing what it takes for chickens to be sold cheaper than a pint of beer. Hugh's Chicken Run will air on consecutive nights: the 7th, 8th and 9th January 2008
-------------------- Just because it works, doesnt mean its safe!
I do disagree. It has to begin with the restaurants changing first and then the domino effect will happen. Locally sourced products are becoming a more available but with chicken people will all ways go with the cheaper deal which is the intensive way. Until the time where the price comes down of chicken / the feed etc. People will not change.
I think this programme is an excellent idea, but why stop at chickens, what about the other animal foods we consume. It wasnt till I saw the cows living in sheds for ALL of their milking life that I switched to organic dairy products. Cows that live outside and can lie down and live a normal cow life. Cows that live in sheds cannot lie down in their filth and their legs get so worn out standing all the time.
How do our meat cattle live, how do our pigs and lambs live, in some supermarkets the meat is labelled as free range or organic, but do we really know what this means?
So Hugh march on and we will march with you, and give us the facts about all animal husbandry.
It was rather noticable that his allottment helpers were all rather rotund, and they all enjoyed the exercise and neighbour bonding
Regarding Chefluv's post: I don't think that getting restaurants to change to free range/organic/bio-diverse foodstuffs will make a difference as the largest demographic of people that buy the '2 for £5' chickens are those who do so through financial necessity and that pretty much means they’re unlikely to frequent restaurants.
With dixiehare I think the point of starting with chickens was as it is the most eaten meat in the UK. It’s an impossible enough task to try and bring about the changes Hugh wants to in this series, let along expanding to all livestock. It would be simply too much for the public to digest, no pun intended.
Much as I love Hugh’s programmes I think that the real issue is not being tackled, as in an Americanised country like England, it would only be destined to fail. It’s simply this; we eat too much meat. We are not designed to eat meat everyday. If we all cut down to eating it two to three times a week there’d less demand and therefore, maybe, less need of mass farming in that way.
Having said that the factory farming of livestock is not just due to the public demanding lower prices, it is down to conglomerate owned supermarkets (eg: ASDA/ Malmart) seeking to maximise profits to many 1000s of per cents. It is this greed that is the real problem and this is pretty much the main reason that the farming industry in this country is the grime state it is.
Lastly one thing that has been at the back of my mind: In a grossly over populated country like England, if we were to all change to freerange foods etc, would the land we have available for farming be able to support us all?
To add to the discussion. I love the HFW programs, we try hard to live a good life but we are lucky to have space to run a few hens, raise few turkeys and grow fresh veg. I dont think restaurants or Hugh will change the mass consumer market. I do think programs like Hughs can and should show us all how mass produced food is achieved. We are then informed and then we can make informed choices. I assume the chickens he is raising are Hubbards. I have also raised some of these free range with no artificial light. They grow like crazy as its a strain of chicken, cross bred over many years, that naturaly puts on lots of growth. I dont think they are genitically modified and I didnt give them any high protine feed and still they were ready in about 10 weeks. The non free range chicks dont know any different and the industry has perfected the environment to provide a reasonable product at a low cost. I assume if the stres levels were high the birds would not thrive. Its the same with TV and Mobile phones, a mass production process to provide low cost goods. Having said that I choose to try and produce my own food simply because I then know ehere its come from and whats in it. We sell any surplus and if we had more space we could sell more, there is a demand. Free range takes up space, it yields a chicken or Turkey with more texture and depending on what it eats possibly flavour but costs more to produce. Changing legislation is a possible route but I guess that would only drive the producers and buyers off shore where UK or EU legistation didnt apply. That would increase food miles and does not make sense. I think I would like to keep as much food produced in the UK for the UK. Clearly there are many people who can afford to eat chicken because its available at a low cost. What I hope we will all see in detail are the differences in the production methods of chicken, how that affects cost, the final product and the issue of animal welfare. I dont understand why the mass producers and supermarekts dont want to join the discussion since I assume they are all operating within the guidelines. They have nothing to hide, we as a society have developed these processes. What I hope we dont discover is that there is a racket going on where so called free range chickens are infact not free range. How do we know? Finally I like the backyard community experiment as this clearly shows how easy it is to raise a few chickens and to grow a few veg to get fresh food on your table but it takes time and effort. Keep up the good work Hugh and the team. We must know what we are eating and where it came from.
I have to agree with you. I do think of when people were short of money and food before in the World Wars they did what they could and reared and grew their own food in whatever space they had.
I watched with great interest Iam a registered organic butcher.I feel that people do watch there money when it comes to buying food.The supermarkets are very good leading the public to there way of thinking.If only we took a little more time saucing our food we would all be healthier.Lets face it a woman would not buy the cheapest dress there is !!!!!!!!!!!!
Originally posted by scatty7: I watched with great interest Iam a registered organic butcher.I feel that people do watch there money when it comes to buying food.The supermarkets are very good leading the public to there way of thinking.If only we took a little more time saucing our food we would all be healthier.Lets face it a woman would not buy the cheapest dress there is !!!!!!!!!!!!
Depends if she was from Essex or not:P
I shared a house for a number of year with a butcher who ran the Ginger Pig in Borough Market.
I learnt so much in that time from him. I knew a lot before hand but thinking back it amazes me that I'd spend four quid of two chicken breasts in a supermarket when I could buy the whole bird and butcher it myself resulting the the same number of breasts and all the other parts too.
I raise pork, beef, chicken, duck, goose, turkey & lamb on the wee scottish land mass that is Fair Isle & everything we raise is done so on a freedom food basis. We have no predators here so our poultry has 24/7 access to outside, our cows, pigs & sheep are all cared for as naturally as possible with the exception that our Aberdeen Angus come inside for the winter (it gets seriously wet up here - the ducks have diversified into giving the chickens swimming lessons) but are fed no artificial bought in feeds, we grow all our fodder with the exception of 8 bags of sugar beet nuts.
We have only just began to produce what we term freedom poultry up here, with the aim of marketing our young pullets as Point of lay birds within the Shetland Isle's & thus meet the need for POL's that havent been stuffed 20 at a time into small crates & spent up to 36hrs inside the crates arriving pretty featherless & stressed, our venture up here has been so successfull that we are currently turning orders down.
There is a need for more natural products, and there are also far to many out there who just do not know how these cheaply produced food products are treated in order to make them cheap, the only way to do so is to continue to show hard hitting images that repulse the viewers into accepting that by buying such products they are contributing to the bad welfare practice that is intensive raising of any animals.
We were all appalled at the conditions POW's were kept in when warcamps came to light, why are such horrific conditions ok when its animals being raised for meat.
Its time the meat industry had a huge overhall & people started to give a hoot about what they are eating.
Originally posted by Chookwoman: What an excellent program & very well presented !
I raise pork, beef, chicken, duck, goose, turkey & lamb on the wee scottish land mass that is Fair Isle & everything we raise is done so on a freedom food basis. We have no predators here so our poultry has 24/7 access to outside, our cows, pigs & sheep are all cared for as naturally as possible with the exception that our Aberdeen Angus come inside for the winter (it gets seriously wet up here - the ducks have diversified into giving the chickens swimming lessons) but are fed no artificial bought in feeds, we grow all our fodder with the exception of 8 bags of sugar beet nuts.
We have only just began to produce what we term freedom poultry up here, with the aim of marketing our young pullets as Point of lay birds within the Shetland Isle's & thus meet the need for POL's that havent been stuffed 20 at a time into small crates & spent up to 36hrs inside the crates arriving pretty featherless & stressed, our venture up here has been so successfull that we are currently turning orders down.
There is a need for more natural products, and there are also far to many out there who just do not know how these cheaply produced food products are treated in order to make them cheap, the only way to do so is to continue to show hard hitting images that repulse the viewers into accepting that by buying such products they are contributing to the bad welfare practice that is intensive raising of any animals.
We were all appalled at the conditions POW's were kept in when warcamps came to light, why are such horrific conditions ok when its animals being raised for meat.
Its time the meat industry had a huge overhall & people started to give a hoot about what they are eating.
Out of interest, did you, or were you eligible, for any government funding when you started up an enterprise like that? I have seen many times images of factory farmed poultry and I think the most hard hitting images in the programme for me was someone hardened to the slaughter of animals, like HFW, breaking down in tear at the prospect for having to do something that he is accustomed to but through the processes involved so alien.
Out of interest, did you, or were you eligible, for any government funding when you started up an enterprise like that?
Everything we have done up here so far has been off our own backs.
The chickens started out just as a need to feed ourselves, we bought some home raised layers, got a rooster from a friend & eventually ran a few hatches to produce new laying hens & roosters for the freezer. The neighbours started asking to buy POl from us, then friends of neighbours & family of neighbours & over the past 18 months it has just snowballed to us having orders for close on 200 birds this year which we raise in batches of 50 so that we arent dealing with huge amounts of chicks at one time.
Its good, we enjoy it & take a lot of pride in producing both live product and meat product that has had a very good life, pigs that get hrs of scratching, showering when its hot & sun cream when needed, lambs that are so used to contact that they arent afraid to come up & say hello. We have happy animals & to us, happy animals lead to happy customers. Isnt that the way it should be ?
Exactly. I do have to say that I enjoy a nice piece of mutton to lamb I Kiwi butcher I knew used to make amazing mutton ham. It was aged for a good four weeks and it was then cured (he kept most of the details secret) but that was amazing.
Nothing beats a good ole mutton stew ! They do they're own version of a mutton ham up here in the shetlands, Reesit mutton, hard to find & even harder to find the real stuff ie made from shetland mutton & not NZ, but well worthy of the hunt or ordering it months in advance from the butchers in Lerwick.
Welfare is a way of life up here, the crofts on the island have precious parcels of land, we ourselves have only 6 acre's of inbye (good grazing pasture) & 37 Hectare's of outbye (rough grazing) the only way to get the best from it is to look after your land & animals and they in turn will look after you in providing for you really well, esp if you refuse to just chuck chemicals at everything & hope it'll all grow grand.
Big year for us this year, we're about to start the organic certification process & at the end of the year will start marketing our meats products, the waiting list we have thus far is encouraging.
I imagine there's only so much demand you can fill with the land you have. SO was there a point where you gave up day jobs or were you self sufficient before hand?
Originally posted by riverghost: I imagine there's only so much demand you can fill with the land you have. SO was there a point where you gave up day jobs or were you self sufficient before hand?
We gave up life as we knew it to move here.
Before, we lived in a tiny fishing village in Aberdeenshire in a terraced house with 6sq yards of garden & ran a very successful building business. Heard about this croft coming up for rent & well, it drew us in.
Life up here is like it used to be, its a small (only 70 of us) but close community, has a shop/post office, primary school, 2 kirks, bird observatory (its a twitchers paradise) the council operated ferry is run from the island & crewed by islanders (of which one is my husband). The island does a lot together, silage is cut & baled as a community, the hill sheep (3/4 of the island is hill grazing) are looked after as a community.
commuting with the mainland for work is impossible, but so thiving is Fair Isle that just about everyone has 4 or 5 different job hats that they wear. In the summer its a really busy place with tourists & bird watchers & we operate as a guest house to help provide some income (it could be busier but we'd both rather be outside rather than inside chained to mealtimes). Its good, small uk towns & villages could learn a lot about provision from the isle.
I can image an advantage of being on an island it it's easier to control preditors as well.
I think the guest house side I'm the complete opposite (I've got a backpacker hostel in the centre of London). I find is a perfect platform to expose people to environment issue by encouraging them to recycle and keeping them informed where all the breakfast goods come from (I find it I supply a great breakast they can see the advantages of buying well sourced food). I think a lot of people saw that programme last night that wouldn't have watched it otherwise.
I would love to have a chicken as the back garden is perfect, about 30 foot by 20 foot with 15 foot high old Victorian brick walls. Unfortunately it is also used by the guests for BBQs etc so I think it wouldn't be an ideal environment.
I too would love to keep chickens but I rent so it is not really an option for me. One day perhaps. Although I would only want to keep them for eggs. I think although its a good idea people shouldnt be encouraged to thinking it is really simple to rear chickens to eat. I for one would worry about how some people without proper knowleddge would look after them not to mention killing them.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by riverghost: I can image an advantage of being on an island it it's easier to control preditors as well.
Thats the easy bit.. There are none apart from the odd bird of prey that visits for a day or two now & then.
We get the same responses from our guests to the extent that a few of last years guests booked to return in 2009 simply because we will by then be serving meats that we have raised ourselves.
The hardest part of running a guest house & producing our own meats etc, was the legislation. Before we could use our own free range eggs as part of guests breakfasts, meals, homebakes etc, we had to register as both egg producers & an egg packing unit, but it also has the benefit of allowing us to sell our eggs to anyone & as we already work to HACCP the only aditional cost was that of a stamp & pad of food ink, but even the extra paperwork involved is all worth it when our chocolate brown eggs take guests right back to childhood memories of eggs bought from the farm gate.
We have two hens who are dubbed *whalsey broodies* due to x breed specifics & where they come from, named Attila & wee Attila in honour of the person who bred them.
So Yes, I do agree, Attila is a grand name from a hen. (esp fiesty hens)
we have them in abundace at the moment ! A good few of our girls have just came back into lay after moult & are chucking double yolkers at us left right & center.
Kids are delighted when they get an extra dippy egg for breakfast.
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I Kiwi butcher I knew used to make amazing mutton ham. It was aged for a good four weeks and it was then cured (he kept most of the details secret) but that was amazing.
