A good week for chickens

It’s been a good week for chickens. I don’t think they have enjoyed so much publicity since the last bout of bird flu. On TV there was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver both campaigning strongly against intensive chicken farming.

Then the government announced it would be banning battery hens. Now Oliver and Sainsbury's are trying to patch things up after reports of a rift that threatened to damage Oliver's lucrative contractual arrangement to appear in the supermarket’s advertisements and promotions.

Crying mums

Animal rights campaigners have been banging on about intensive farming methods for years without making much progress. But once celebrities get involved everything changes. Add a bit of theatre, some crying mums and kids – even Fearnley-Whittingstall was sobbing – and before you know it farmers, retailers, shoppers and journalists are running around like chickens with no heads.

I remember watching a Joan Bakewell programme years ago when chickens were having their heads removed on a conveyor belt. That did it for me for and I went vegetarian for two years.

Turkey gravy

It was tough being vegetarian, particularly at Christmas when I was eating nut roast and everyone else was having turkey. We had turkey gravy and vegetarian gravy in two separate jugs but my mother-in-law poured them both together. She said it was an accident but I have always suspected otherwise.

My own stance on eating animals had less to do with the killing animals of animals and more to do with the way they were living under intensive farming regimes. I have never had a problem with killing and eating wild things, which was why my vegetarian diet allowed fish, pheasant, venison, that kind of thing (OK, I realise that is not likely to pass muster among signed-up bean-eating veggies).

Later I decided sheep were OK because they lived on the hills, and when I began to see pigs in fields I came out of my meat eating hibernation although I still have issues with the indiscriminate netting of fish and I’m right behind the latest chicken campaigns. I looked around a chicken-rearing shed in Norway last year and it neither looked nor smelled pretty although it was well run.

Good egg

Sainsbury's has been leafleting heavily this week to tell us about its various awards in recognition of its animal welfare standards. These include "the Good Egg Award" from Compassion in World Farming.

Its leaflet also explains its various food standards labels from Sainsbury's basics (a shed)to Sainsbury's SO organic chicken (comparative chicken luxury where the chickens are allowed to get about a bit). My problem is not just with the chickens on display but the hundreds of chicken products in supermarkets. Where did all those chicken bits come from in the chicken supreme, chicken soup and chicken stock?

Chicken wars

Watch out for chicken wars in the next few weeks as the big stores begin to try grab the moral high ground on chicken welfare. The Sainsbury's leaflets, I suspect, were merely the first salvo.

Perhaps this is the start of something big. Where next? How about taking a stand to save battery people? Down with work cubicles.