Jamie's Rant Over Cheap Chickens For Shoppers (Glasgow Sunday Mail)
CELEBRITY chef Jamie Oliver wants shoppers to shun cheap chicken for a better class of bird. In new show Jamie's Fowl Dinners the 32-year-old investigates ...

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I'm not a huge Jamie Oliver (celebrity chef in Britain) but good on him on this one and I couldn't agree more that if you are paying less than £3 for a chicken then something is not right somewhere for the bird or the farmer.

I have seen chickens as cheap as $0.99/lb and legs for $0.69/lb. How can a chicken be raised humanely at that price? I imagine farmers turned to factory farming because we insisted on mass produced prices. It has become an institiution now so changing things is hard. City people often don't connect their food to farmers in the first place.

good on him.  

Difficult one to address - it is easy to understand how someone on a low income with several mouths to feed may feel they have no choice but to go for the cheaper options.  I fully agree with Jamie's ideology, as I'm sure most people do,  that we need to better support farmers so that both they and their animals benefit.  Maybe increased farming subsidies and incentives for farmers is one of the ways forward. It must be a very difficult financial decision for farmers although I think UK legislation this coming year is banning battery hen farming and so hopefully this may improve the situation across the board.  

I am so glad they are banning battery hen farming, it is just not right and I am surprised that it was not banned a long time ago!

I have been in barns and seen them. It is a grim way to raise a chicken. The place I visited was hit by a hail storm and the ventilation system was knocked out. 3000 chickens died from lack of air.   I was there with the insurance adjuster who was handling their claim. There were so many chickens in one barn that without artificial air, they suffocated. They couldn't even be used as food because of how they died. They just dug a pit and burried them. But don't worry their insurance covered it. Too bad the chickens didn't have some kind of "insurance".

my gosh the poor little chickens! Thats awfu, so many of them in the barn with no artificial air they all died. I have seen vids of youtube of battery hen farming, its awful. most (5/6) of our first chickens were ex-battery hens, only one remains - chocky. Its nice that the ex-battery chickens ccame to a nice home to liv the rest of their lifes  

I can't imagine what your chickens felt like when you first let them out. They have no life in battery cages. It was a horrible site/sight. The farmer was concerned about the loss, but not about the loss of life. Who could have thought of such a farming method? What kind of mind conceived of such a system. It comes back to haunt us though. Such intense farming breeds disease and the runoff waters from such farms is dangerous. The wells at Walkerton, Ontario somehow got contaminated and the monitoring system failed(human error) and people died or were very sick from E. Coli, a very dangerous form of it. Chickens raised in such intense conditions are sources of food poisoning and have to be handle very carefully. Most people are not carefull enough and outbreaks of food poisoning increase. I won't eat some foods in public places. The battery cage chickens have their revenge in some ways. it is a stupid system for all involved.

I've just been watching Jamie's Fowl Dinners by Jamie Oliver.  He's on a quest to try and improve general chicken husbandry and educated the general public and our supermarkets about the reality of life for the battery hen and intensively farmed chicken.

The big supermarkets in the UK sell chickens at 2 for £5.00 or by one get one free etc.  These are all your bog-standard, intensive farmed chicken.  They are genetically predispositioned to grow at an alarming rate - from hatching, they are ready for slaughter at 35 days old!  Their poor legs cannot often cope with this abnormal top heaviness and many are lame or suffer from severe hock burns due to sitting in their own ammonia covered faeces all day

I couldn't believe it when Jamie said that for each chicken, the farmer earns just 3 pence  .  It's no wonder the famers feel caught between a rock and a hard place.  We need legislation to ban this practice because trying to convince people to "do the right thing" in the name of animal welfare quite frankly falls on the deaf ears of many - surely an extra £1.50 for a chicken isn't too much to ask  

It is pretty shocking isn't it. I don't think it is better here although there is a movement towards "free range" chicken. People can choose to pay more. Some do, but those with limited income just can't do it. As you say, the changes are best made at the government level. That means being politically aware and in some cases active. I like to think that the whole farming style will change. I also have hopes that the world will become ecologically aware while there is still time. I suppose if I had been on the Titanic I would have organized a group to start bailing. You never know when you might succeed.

I am shocked at how little the farmers get paid per chicken.

I watched Hugh Fernly and Jamie Olivers programs, i don't especially eat meat anyway but after watching the way the poor things live I couldent eat battery chicken again (or free range tbh)

What i dont understand is a family doesnt need to eat chicken 3 times a week - theres plenty of cheaper healthy options, if chicken was a treat for once a week it would save on a budget and leave room to buy one free range chicken instead of the cheap ones

We need to change our thinking about the whole system and do things differently. Change is slow. But I think everytime we make a good choice we are becoming part of the solution. The big changes will have to come on the government level. We need laws to help farmers and protect the animals.  

jamies fowl dinners, a great TV program that will make you pay the extra £1 for a chicken that has had a good life before it comes to the table. Just a one off program but it was well worth the watch - did any1 else catch it?

quite honestly i don't think there is any excuse for battery farming. Although i don't eat meat personally , i think the shops and farmers themselves should be more responsible and boycott them, if it wasn't for the profit margins of the supermarkets i'm sure the battery farmers would much prefer having a free range farm... as it is i think there should be a push into some sort of aggreement... i never want to see british farmers go off the market but at the same time they need to take some responsibility and start making these changes themselves
charity starts at home

hes done alot of good jamie has i wonder what he will do next

Just to prove people might as well get a chicken that has had a great life before slaughter for a little price see this. Diane got a chicken for £3, the chicken was RSPCA standard approved - and when we worked it out it was only 24p more than a badly looked after chicken. Surely the world can afford an extra 24p for the sunday roast?