Chicken off our menus.Byline: FIONA PHILLIPS Fiona Phillips (born 1 January 1961, Canterbury) is a journalist, broadcaster and television presenter. After leaving the University of Birmingham with a B.A. (Hons) in English she started her career in independent radio working for local stations County Sound, Hereward Radio and RIVER Cottage River Cottage is a former weekend and holiday home in Dorset which, in 1997, was used by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as a setting for three television series: Escape to River Cottage, Return to River Cottage and River Cottage Forever chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (born January 14 1965) is a English celebrity chef and TV presenter, noted for his mildly eccentric antics and back-to-nature philosophy. His mother is gardener and writer Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall. made me cry as I watched him on TV on Wednesday night - and it was nothing to do with his appalling fashion sense and rampant hair. He cried, too. Because he couldn't bear the shockingly cruel way in which the majority of chickens that end up on our tables are raised. Each year, 800million inhumanely-raised chickens are eaten in Britain. The average British woman will eat half her body weight in poultry that has lived in its own faeces, while seeing no daylight, and being fed around the clock. Many of the birds have broken limbs because their legs cannot bear the weight of their wretched bodies. And they're infected because they live in their own waste surrounded by hundreds of other ill-fated birds. Ninety-eight per cent of the chicken eaten in the UK is raised in this way. Still, for two birds for a fiver at the supermarket, who cares? Store bosses certainly don't. Cut-price birds for sale on its shelves were shown to have "hock burns Hock burns are marks found on the upper joints of chickens and other birds raised on broiler farms. These marks are where the ammonia from the waste of other birds has burned through the skin of the leg, leaving a mark. ", which means the chicken's overweight body has broken its legs and it's been forced to drag itself around filthy, ammoniasoaked floors for food and water. This results in blisters on their breasts or abrasions, called hock burns, on their legs. Tasty eh? Pop down to your local supermarket and you're sure to see one. So what do we do if, like Hugh and Jamie Oliver, we care? We buy and eat free-range or organic birds, right? Well, ideally, if you can afford it, and you don't mind eating animals, yes. But what if two bloated, injured, infested chickens for a fiver are all you can afford? Buy them regardless and eat their tasteless taste·less adj. 1. Lacking flavor; insipid. 2. Not having or showing good taste. taste  less·ly adv. , injured flesh, right?
Well no - don't buy them at all.
Obviously that's not going to go down well with farmers, who've already hit back by saying if they're forced to stop cruelty to chickens, supermarkets will simply import cheap birds from Thailand instead. No. Not if we don't want them they won't. Besides, a large proportion of the sick birds we eat come from Brazil and Poland already. There you go - well-travelled, ill chicken for Sunday lunch. Nice. Battery-farmed eggs will be banned by 2012, with environment secretary Hilary Benn saying: "I think it's one the public supports." I think we do, and I think we'd support a further ban on fouler |
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