jamies fowl dinners

The one thing that really surprised me was their life span, battery farm chicken = 38 days approx. Wild chicken = 10 years.

Thats a shocking difference. Chickens as we know them are just food machines.

Luckily im not a heavy meat eater (maybe have chicken, beef, lamb once a week atmost) and when I do I almost always prefer to pay a little more for a better product, after watching that I will now double and triple check to see if its a well looked after animal, because those battery farms are just sickening.
 
xirokx said:
trouble is even if they were free range etc, i would still feel guilty , i mean what gives us the right to lord it over mother nature, to get pleasure out of eating someone...
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It's a bit different though mate, although I hate the intensive farming and battery chickens, at least Free Range is giving a half decent life for the Chickens

But whether we kept them at farms or not, we'd still eat them. Its part of the whole food chain

If you happened to stroll through a pack of Lions, I highly doubt they'd be all like

"Sorry chaps, let the poor guy past, I'm taking no pleasure in eating someone to survive, now Simba, about those berries you saw yesterday...."

We eat to survive, and not everyone can stick being a veggie
 
Surfer said:
wait so this program was about how to eat animals ethically?
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Didnt tell you how to eat your chicken. Only to educate consumers of what happens th there cheap chickens before it get to there plate.

I always get my parents to get free range eggs and a free range chicken, because the taste difference is very obvious. I am in favour of the RSPCA standard of chicken farming, but no doubt would be more than happy to spend a couple more quid to buy a chicken which has been well looked after and hasnt be forced to live in crap conditions.
 
I watched the show and found it pretty interesting even though i've seen many things similar to it before.

I've been buying free range egg's for years now as when i just bought the cheapest which im guessing was battery hen's I was getting double yokers all the time which to me can't be a good sign of things, It was very rare I would find these but all of a sudden I was getting loads of them in one dozen of egg's :confused: you can't tell me somethings not up with that.

As for the cheap chickens i'll admit I buy the 2 for £5/£6 offers from tesco and will definately be buying different should I see the other options if its not to expensive, I dont buy breast meat on its own or its very rare I would, I usualy buy legs / thighs or whole chickens as they have more flavour and it costs less to boot.

I think the chicken farm we saw at the end was great and the chickens seemed really healthy and its definately got to go this way or something really bad is going to some how work its way into the food supply and people are going to end up ill / die as its only a matter of time.

Next time im in tesco im going to look more closely at the willow farm chickens i think it was mentioned as being the better farmed birds.
 
I'm definitely glad we've ditched supermarket meat in favour of something much better. What's worrying is that, in doing so, we're also saving money.
 
I think people forget that if we didn't eat cows, chickens, sheep etc., then we wouldn't even have them in the UK as they're not native. The landscape would be completely changed without the livestock we breed for meat.

Anyway, last night's show just built on Hugh's shows earlier in the week for me. I've always bought free range eggs and usually go for the free range whole chickens if we have a roast. I've never really thought about it when buying breast/thighs etc., so I'll make much more of an effort to buy free range from now on. I'll also take note of the mayo I'm buying etc. Thankfully I don't buy much processed food, and never any chicken drumsticks and the like, so I think I'm pretty good in that respect without realising it :)

What they're doing with these enriched environments for the caged hens is great, but I'll still buy free range. OK, so we're never going to go 100% free range and people will still buy cheap eggs, but it wouldn't take much effort just to improve the conditions that these birds live in during their short lives. Impressed by the supermarkets attitudes too: Waitrose, Co-op, Sainsburys. Looks like they're actually listening to the consumer.
 
xirokx said:
i know how you feel, im thinking of becoming a vegeterian, those poor chickens...did you see those lovely little chicks...

cant believe I have been involved but a case of out of sight out of mind and never thought about it for 1 sec until now...

trouble is even if they were free range etc, i would still feel guilty , i mean what gives us the right to lord it over mother nature, to get pleasure out of eating someone...

AFAIK I dont see any difference then if it were humans on that show...murder is murder no matter how to dress it up..
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Mother nature has no qualms about her children eating each other. Just look at all the carnivores in the animal kingdom!

By eating meat, we're simply doing what nature has equipped us to do. No more, no less. It's perfectly natural, and certainly not "murder".

On a related note: my wife & I buy most of our groceries from the local farm shop. For the things we can't get there, we visit the Co-Op. We only buy from supermarkets when we have no choice; and when that happens, we use Morrisons. Never Tesco or Walmart (ASDA).

The best of it is, our local farm is cheaper than the supermarkets, with better quality produce that's straight out of the ground! :)
 
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I'll just copy and paste my post from another forum:

Sensationalist shock tv...But who would expect different from the fat-tongued mockney ****.

"Here's Mr. Hellmans...who use BadEggs!"

"Actually...We're stopping that..."

"Aren't Hellmans great?!"

:rolleyes:

*n
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xirokx said:
i know how you feel, im thinking of becoming a vegeterian, those poor chickens...did you see those lovely little chicks...

cant believe I have been involved but a case of out of sight out of mind and never thought about it for 1 sec until now...

trouble is even if they were free range etc, i would still feel guilty , i mean what gives us the right to lord it over mother nature, to get pleasure out of eating someone...

AFAIK I dont see any difference then if it were humans on that show...murder is murder no matter how to dress it up..
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xirokx said:
this man speaks the truth...

difference is cuz its animals and we love to eat em WE get away with it.....can you imagine if it was humans...you think of the slave trade and persecution of the jews how long it was and it is still spoken of today...

who speaks for the animals that are killed for our pleasure...

how can you even get satisfaction after watching that show and then having to eat chicken the next day...how the hell did the ppl there digest their food...
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Oh do get over yourself. When animals can farm humans, I'll think about my stance. Until that day, I'll continue to eat fish, fowl, farmed meat, game and everything else I can get my grubby mitts on. It tastes great, it's part of a complete diet. Live with it.

As LK said, this country would not be the same and those animals would simply not exist were it not for human consumption of meat and dairy.

I'm actually surprised that there are people here who DIDN'T know where their meat and dairy comes from.

Don't kneejerk and go off meat; simply be more intelligent with your purchases. I can give no better advice than to find a local butcher who knows about his meat, where it came from and how it was farmed. The cost is not that much more but the real reason I eat free-range chicken is the taste; you can't beat it.

*n
 
I have no problem buying battery farmed stuff and it hasn't changed my mind. However I do much prefer decent produce. It tastes so much nicer and it's also lower in fat. Battery farmed chicken is not that healthy for you. Roll on the payrise, I might be able to shop at the farm shop then or at least a butcher.
 
Another thing the show didn't really touch on was the amount of chicken now shipped over on oil tanker sized boats from Asia (usually Thailand)

Most of the tinned, processed, ready meal / packet stuff in the major supermarkets is all from Thailand. The simple reason being, it costs even less to get from there.

And the sad fact is, this is the method of supply is the one which is increasing the most, as the general UK public simply can't afford to pay for the Chicken Jamie want's us to have.

It's nice to think that we could all buy 2 fancy chicken breasts at £3.50 every few days, but thats OK for a single guy or a couple with 1 kid.

Unfortunately, if a family with 3 kids want to feed them properly, they need to buy a lot more than 2 chicken breasts - and stuff other than whole chickens. Most need 6 at a time, and there's no way people in the UK on it's average wage are going to be able to afford that this coming year with the already extortionate price of our groceries. The program never really looked at the average purchase for a average family per week - It seemed to assume we were all single with no kids.

And just to point out, Sainsburys didn't want to join the debate (probably because they are the biggest supplier of these useless chickens and the imported stuff)
 
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AcidHell2 said:
I have no problem buying battery farmed stuff and it hasn't changed my mind. However I do much prefer decent produce. It tastes so much nicer and it's also lower in fat. Battery farmed chicken is not that healthy for you. Roll on the payrise, I might be able to shop at the farm shop then or at least a butcher.
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What we've found is that if you change to a butcher or a farm shop (cost wise there's very little in it), the main thing that changes is the cuts of meat that are acceptable. I'd gone off pretty much all pork and lamb, braising steak etc from supermarkets in a big way, but have rediscovered how good these meats can be recently. The thing is chicken, traditionally, is not a cheap meat, it's only the mass production methods that have made it so, and made it so common (mass production is much less noticable in meat quality it seems for chicken than other meats). You also find you need less meat, because it doesn't shrink half as much.
 
divosuk said:
Another thing the show didn't really touch on was the amount of chicken now shipped over on oil tanker sized boats from Asia (usually Thailand)

Most of the tinned, processed, ready meal / packet stuff in the major supermarkets is all from Thailand. The simple reason being, it costs even less to get from there.
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He did mention imported meat briefly but didn't give it enough time. IIRC something similar happened with pig farming. After a campaign by do-gooders the govt banned intensive pig farming which instead of raising standards simply closed down the industry in the UK and cheap intensively raised pork is now simply shipped in from Europe where welfare standards are even lower than were here originally.
 
Thats what I think these sort of programs do.

Rather than prepare and research the possible outcomes of these shock TV shows, the producers just stick together an hours worth of stuff that is designed to make a TV program. Nothing else.

I can see the UK Chicken industry suffering as a result, and the general public just getting their chicken from other continents or Europe where there will be even less regulation for cheaper chickens.

I would take a guess and say, 50% of people will ALWAYS go for the cheap poorly bred chicken 50% of the time.

And just for the record, I work with a guy who worked for Moy Park Chickens (which ship 1.2million a week - but has now closed due to Thai Imports) in Northern Ireland. He told us a story about the Free range chickens.

They were allowed to run free for a specific amount of time in a fenced off area - then they are caged again, with no anti-biotics or chemicals in their feed. Surprisingly, they nearly all have some form of disease or infection when killed - unlike the cheap chickens. He stated they were one of the biggest cons in the industry. And they are sold for double the price.
 
It's amazing how many people didn't realise where a lot of their food comes from and how it arrives at them in the supermarket. I found it fascinating seeing the people's reactions rather than the process which I knew about. It's amazing how many clueless people there are.

We have a local egg farm here, (in London!!!!), and I pick up my eggs from there on my way back from work, and every other week buy a chicken from there too. They are completely free range and yes costs a bit more as it's all done by hand rather than industrial process, but I don't care, it tastes SO much better.

I always try and buy as free range as I can, ultimately you're taking the supermarket's or the butcher's word for it, but you can but try.
 
penski said:
Oh do get over yourself. When animals can farm humans, I'll think about my stance. Until that day, I'll continue to eat fish, fowl, farmed meat, game and everything else I can get my grubby mitts on. It tastes great, it's part of a complete diet. Live with it.

As LK said, this country would not be the same and those animals would simply not exist were it not for human consumption of meat and dairy.

I'm actually surprised that there are people here who DIDN'T know where their meat and dairy comes from.

Don't kneejerk and go off meat; simply be more intelligent with your purchases. I can give no better advice than to find a local butcher who knows about his meat, where it came from and how it was farmed. The cost is not that much more but the real reason I eat free-range chicken is the taste; you can't beat it.

*n
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That's pretty much spot on Penski, I'm pretty much vegetarian by choice, although I do eat meat when I can tell it's good quality and from a good source.

People are built to eat both vegetables and meat - but it doesn't mean you have to eat any old meat!

For this reason I don't eat tesco value meats, and don't eat battery eggs and always check content on foods for what crap is in them.

Rich
 
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