Hi.

The thread was moved following feedback from other forum members.

The main reason for the move is that the thread is discussing the issue more than the actual programme so it would be more at home in the Food & Drink forum.

Hope that clears things up!
DS Forum Support

This is the key. Eat less, but better. Also, we throw too much away. We owe it to the animal to use it fully. So, buy whole chickens, not the separate packs of breast fillets. Roast the whole thing, have the breast meat for one meal, a salad with the legs and wings the next day, and there should be enough left on the carcass for a sandwich or two. When the carcass is denuded, boil it for stock/soup. A £4/£5 free range chicken doesn't sound so expensive when you get 3 meals out of it, as BrideXIII and I both do (independently, I should add).

People who were shocked and upset about the male chicks being gassed should realise that this still happens on free range farms. They are still considered "useless" to the industry, free range eggs or not.

Also, vegetarians/vegans and animal rights protestors have been trying to inform people of these realities for a long time. It's sad that it takes a celebrity chef on tv to start getting the message through. If Jamie Oliver was a vegetarian or vegan I'm sure many would automatically shut off and accuse him of "preaching".

Thanks again Justagirl for telling it how it is. It's the same for me, if I ever provide a link from a vegetarian site people on here don't want to know. It's dismissed as propoganda.

yep, i dont share my chooks with just anyone you know

I've always found Jamie Oliver really, really annoying. But I take my hat off to him for last night's show.

It looked like the people present were far more upset by birds being killed, than them living in hellish conditions whilst alive.

It's a real shame they couldn't show footage from the less friendly intensive battery farms, but obviously they'd never consent to be filmed.

The difference in the supermarket price of a battery bird and Freedom Food bird is less than a packet of fags. Hopefully in 30 years time we'll look back at battery farming and cringe.

I haven't watched the programme yet - I am going to watch it tonight.

I went to visit my mother today... Whenever, in the past, I have given her a lift to the supermarket to do some shopping she has ALWAYS bought the cheapest eggs and chickens she can find and always called me a "snob" for only buying free-range. I have tried on numerous occasions to explain my reasoning behind it!

Anyway... she watched the programme last night and actually apologised to me today and told me that even after all these years of buying battery-farmed she would ONLY ever buy free-range in future! She is in her 70's and quite stubborn so the programme did have some effect at least!

Yes but the consumer is not made totally aware of the origin of meat so they don't know if what they are buying is good quality or not.

It is Supermarket greed that has caused this problem. If they don't sell it...we can't buy it. Consumers will always aim to save money - that's just common sense on our part. The government should FORCE the responsible farming of fresh produce.

It is the fault of the supermarket - not the consumer.

BrideXIII - Well, if you're ever in Suffolk, I'll always share mine with you.

The gassing of the chicks caused me a moment's sadness, I'll admit, because chicks are cute. However, chicks become chickens, and all of the people in the audience who went 'ahhhhhhhh', when they saw them alive, and 'oh, no' when they saw them dying, will be people who are quite happy to eat chicken (I'm assuming that the audience was 100% omnivorous, given the nature of the study - certainly if there were a table of vegetarians, I'd have assumed Mr O would have canvassed their opinion at some stage). You can't say 'Oh, it's cruel' and carry on eating eggs or chicken. You can't have it both ways. You have to become as informed as you possibly can about the realities of production, and decide what you regard as acceptable sacrifice. The gassing of the chicks is as humane a way to deal with the superfluous males as I can think of, and feeding them to reptiles is part of the food chain in all its glory. So, I can't really allow myself to become overly sentimental about that.

I've found JO annoying in the past, but I thought this was a cracking programme. I think the key was that it was fairly un-preachy. He was admirably non-judgmental with the chicken farmer and the egg council chap, although we were left in no doubt as to where his sympathies lie. He was also impressively derisive with regard to his own employers not sending a representative to sample the goods. In short, the show said 'this is what you should buy', not 'this is what you must buy, and if you don't, you're worse than Hitler', and that'll have a far greater effect than telling people what to do.

For what it's worth, I nipped to Asda earlier for a wee top-up shop, and there wasn't a free-range chicken to be seen in the building. Normally they have a small selection, including some very nice Norfolk-raised birds, but there were none to be seen. Could they have been stripped bare following 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners'? They also had trays of 18 free-range eggs for £2, so anyone who says that it costs too much to be ethical is, at best, ill-informed.

Poodledoodledoo is right. Supermarkets do, to a large extent, decide what we buy, but we also decide what they stock by buying it or not buying it. We need to tell them what we want, by only buying the good stuff. Finding a good local butcher and supporting them as much as we can is also worthwhile.

I think Jamie has done hens a diservice. People think it's now ok to buy free range chickens. It's not. Forget what your saw on the TV programme, the rules governing free range chickens means they just have to have access to 'outside'. The fact that all that amounts to is a small opening that about 90% of the chickens can't access doesn't seem to matter to those who want to salve their conscience and buy free range. Free range is a lie and don't prentend it's any diffenent please. If you really care then don't b****y support the amimal slave trade. It's up to you.

The human race are naturally carnivore, from the caveman to modern day! There are minerals and proteins we need from meat, our jaw and teeth are specifically to deal with meat!

It's personal preference whether you continue with that or are anti meat. Giving people an informed choice will be the best way to educate people, whilst keeping any animal in captive is unnatural, it is unfortunately part of the system. If people's eyes are open to the conditions then that will help!

Jamie & Hugh, weren't out to convert people to vegetarianism, they wanted to raise awareness about the conditions and standard of birds!

Like it or not .... meat is the main staple food of man! That's how the food chain works! If we don't raise animals to satisfy that, do you suggest we return to the hunter gatherer stage and revert back a couple thousand years?

Humans are not carnivores. At best we are omnivores. We can survive perfectly well without killing other species for food. millions of vegetarians and vegans can attest to that fact.

Sorry I did mean that, was focusing more on the fact that we are naturally built for eating meat!

What about those that can't survive without meat? I don't mean as a choice but dietary requirements! Without going into depth I cannot survive without a certain amount of meat (tried veggie years ago and became very ill) and recently cut down my meat intake and I'm currently suffering from doing so.

Vegetarianism is a choice, our predisposition is to eat meat.

I buy our meat locally from a farm shop where the animals all raised (and are visible), butchered and sold.

I actually don't agree that our disposition is to eat meat. The World Health Organisation amongst others have said that vegetarians are healthier and live longer. We also have more in common with herbivores than carnivores. Despite a couple of our teeth being called canines, they're not real canines, our mouth and teeth are designed for chewing not tearing. Carnivores have hinged jaws, we do not. Our nails would be usless for tearing also. Our intestines are much longer than those of carnivores. They're designed for processing plant material not flesh. Also, why don't people eat their meat raw? That's because the idea disgusts most people.

The reason why nobody eats raw chicken will be perfectly obvious to anyone who's eaten an undercooked one. As for free-range being a myth, everything's relative.

I'm an extremely healthy vegetarian - of the vegetarians I've come across who say they 'suffer' from not eating meat, inevitably for the vast majority, it's because they're not eating a balanced diet.

Yep and that's my problem! I am intolerant of certain green foods due to an iron intolerance, I can process the iron in meat better than the veggies apparently! If I eat a balanced diet with meat and veg I suffer a lot less.

Sorry if i'm being pedantic but there are no battery chickens for meat - they are for eggs. Deep litter chickens in sheds are for meat. A good stockman will have his numbers right in the first place and will have adequate ventilation and also have music playing (Smooth Radio in the one i went to!) and little ladders and the like. There was no smell of amonia and there was enough room for them to move about. I would generally say there are good poultry farmers and there are the cowboys. They start them off with one hour's darkness and gradually increase it as they get older. The slaughter shown on Oliver's program is not typical. Chickens are hung upside down on a carousel which is in the dark and at a temperature that makes them sleepy so by the time they reach the stunning bath they are basically sleeping.

The site of those little chicks gasping for air, will haunt me.
that is so crual.

ML x

I thought the show was very good. It took a difficult subject, and stopped you from switching over by making it entertaining.

It was really educational too. I remember when I went veggie, there was a fuss about Quorn because it used battery eggs - I never knew there was a wet egg trade how naive.

I think it was brilliantly done because I learned a lot, and it's still very vivid in my head.

We all have the option to choose what we eat, and I'm not down on anyone who does eat battery chickens because of their budget - or they aren't bothered about chickens. But it feels nice to know some of the facts. To have that information out in the open.

The whole mechanically recovered meat thing should have been out in the open years ago, only a lunatic would buy it if they knew how it was made, but it gets hidden in stuff and passed out to us. Think of the profits those guys make They were so afraid they wouldn't let Jamie have one of their machines!

It was very sad, but they got off light

I'm haunted by all the chicks on the conveyor belt. We have fcuked those animals up big time. All birds need parents to grow up properly. Sounds daft - but being born onto a conveyor belt is un-natural beyond anything Unbelievable.

Indeed. There are alternative sources for every nutrient that we get from meat. Nuts for protein, etc. I just like meat.

Are you a vegetarian? If not, will the sight of those gasping chicks make you change your eating habits in any way? If not, you are obviously happy to go on supporting what you regard as cruelty. Personally, I don't regard it as cruelty. It's a great deal kinder than almost all of the alternatives.

The biggest shock tactics used were around the death of chickens both young and old. To me this seems completely at odds with the message of the show since the chicks and chickens will still be killed no matter how well they are treated, free range or barn.

It's all very well those audience members gasping and crying when seeing birds killed and then stating that they will buy free range from now on but that killing isn't going to change. I can't be the only one that sees through this emotional manipulation and I don't think it really helps the cause.

The argument is a bit pointless, we have been hunters for as far back as we can tell so it is our disposition to eat meat regardless of anything else.

We are omnivorous not carnivorous so that may explain some of the biological differences but we are most definitely predators.

As for raw meat, the reason is just cultural. We have in the past eaten meat raw and there are still plenty of raw meat and fish dishes around.