Jamie Oliver and chickens

Cafe Society
121

[QUOTE=chowder]
Just recently Jamie and another bloke with a double barrelled name, both well known British chefs, have been telling and showing us the conditions in which battery hens are raised and pretty bad they are.
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Just goes to show what a massive hypocrite JO is. He’s perfectly happy to take large wads of cash to promote Sainsburys, one of the largest purchasers and purveyors of… battery chickens. Yes, I know about the program where JO ostensibly criticised Sainsburys (and others) for not attending his televised discussion about all this, but to my mind that doesn’t exonerate him. Refusing to take the ad contract in the first place might have shown he has some principles he believes in. As usual, it’s money first, then principles.

Another thing worth mentioning about JO is that he is a single issue pony. He wants kids to eat in a more healthy fashion. Good. I want children to grow up speaking correctly and understanding how to express themselves without having to swear or use slang. JO is a terrible example. On his first show about school dinners he was unable to articulate his views without having to be ‘beeped’ and in his ordinary cookery shows he of course expresses himself in a fabulously inarticulate way. He has his priorities, I have mine. He thinks ‘kids’ should be shown heathier options. I think he should be taken off television until he can learn to speak the language correctly and thereby set a good example to younger people.

122

[QUOTE=ianzin]
I think he should be taken off television until he can learn to speak the language correctly and thereby set a good example to younger people.
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Bolding mine.

You appear to have misspelt " and beaten". :slight_smile:

The “unhealthy” school foods were really only unappetising to the food snobs and organic smugs. The kids didn’t mind them and they weren’t nutritionally bad (kids need energy, protein and vitamins, it doesn’t need to be organic or even green coloured). Schools need to get back into the business of turning out children who can read, write and add up at a level which allows them to be productive members of society.

123

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
There’s a difference, but it’s only a difference of degree. Humans decided they wanted it thus, and set about making it so - in some cases, nature gives us a helping hand or imposes a framework in which we must operate, in other cases, we get to tinker with the chemistry set - but it’s all tinkering.

Quorn isn’t really any more evil than any other manufactured foodstuff, such as bread or pasta - both of those bear little resemblance to anything that came out of the soil.
You’re agreeing with something that isn’t actually my point, or a point I would care to make. I like heritage varieties (but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that they’re ‘natural’ - they’re just as much a product of coercion as modern cultivars).
But I think we still need to tinker - it’s what we’ve always done.

**The problem (as far as I’m concerned) is who gets to define ‘good’ ** - if it’s up to me, a good tomato is one with a thin skin, lots of flavour and aroma and soft, juicy flesh - but if it’s up to the supermarkets, a good tomato might be one that crops consistently, is durable to survive mechanised packing and transportation, lasts a long time on the shelf and looks good under artificial lights.

Now of course it can be argued that I can make the supermarket see things my way by voting with my wallet, except I can only choose from what’s on offer, and what I can actually afford.
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the 3 bolded areas I would like to comment on.

IMO, the is a huge difference between bread and some wannabe chicken, pasta is pasta, bread is bread and chicken is well… chicken. I get that a lot of people don’t eat meat and prefer a bunch of the alternatives out there. But please, to say they taste as good as real chicken kinda makes me wonder why the heck they are vegans in the first place.

Well I’m not being a smartypants, but what is your point? I seem to have missed it in all these replies.

I am not saying anyone gets to define “good”. My point, and that of all us other “back to the roots/heritage” types is very simple. We don’t want to lose the breeds/varieties of the produce that was available before chemical manipulation, multinational factory farming etc. has endangered these species and strains.

124

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
But please, to say they taste as good as real chicken kinda makes me wonder why the heck they are vegans in the first place.
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Ethical reasons?

I can understand being so disgusted with animal farming practices that you swear off any animal product. But, you might still miss your bacon sarnies or chicken curry so you find substitutes.

Personally, I think Quorn™ and other textured non-meat proteins taste nasty.

125

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
the 3 bolded areas I would like to comment on.

IMO, the is a huge difference between bread and some wannabe chicken, pasta is pasta, bread is bread and chicken is well… chicken. I get that a lot of people don’t eat meat and prefer a bunch of the alternatives out there. But please, to say they taste as good as real chicken kinda makes me wonder why the heck they are vegans in the first place.
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That’s a fair question, but I think for many people, it’s that they like the experience of eating meaty things, but dislike the ethical implications of animals being killed or poorly treated - it’s a perfectly valid dilemma to find yourself in, and meat substitute products exist to try to solve that dilemma. Really, where’s the harm? You keep on saying there’s a huge difference between this and that, but I think your distinctions are actually pretty arbitrary. What exactly is the huge difference between the process of transforming wheat into bread and the process of manufacturing quorn or other meat substitutes.

I didn’t come here trying to make any point really, it’s just that you appeared to be strongly agreeing with a point I never tried to make.

I think that’s a laudable goal - I was a member of the Henry Doubleday Research Association myself for some years (before it rebranded as just another organic gardening catalogue and stopped being a heritage seed bank).

126

[QUOTE=Szlater]
Ethical reasons?

I can understand being so disgusted with animal farming practices that you swear off any animal product. But, you might still miss your bacon sarnies or chicken curry so you find substitutes.

Personally, I think Quorn™ and other textured non-meat proteins taste nasty.
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Fair enough, and you too Mangetout.

127

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
I can’t speak for any major producer, and I am just starting out small, but I intend to have a portable coop that I can move.
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Not to keep beating the same drum, but there is a multi-chapter section in The Omnivore’s Dilemma examining a small farm where a moveable chicken coop is employed.

Basically, the whole farm is constructed something like a mechanical system, but with plants and animals instead of machines. Pasture is systematically fenced off, to allow grass to grow; cattle are allowed into small plots of pasture when the grass is ready, then moved on; the chicken coop is then moved onto those plots, where the chickens eat more grass as well as the maggots out of the cowpies, and their droppings add nitrogen to the soil; the coop is moved off the plot before the chickenshit “burns” the soil; and so on and so forth. And apparently, while this is highly intensive labor for the humans (both physically and analytically), the resulting level of production is very good, with almost zero chemical fertilizers or other “industrial” additions. Really fascinating stuff.

The book also includes some discussion of how industrially-farmed animals have been reduced to literal machines, rather than the above, where the natural inclinations of the animals are employed to serve specific roles. For example, in addition to the removal of beaks from chickens and tails from pigs to prevent the overstressed creatures from attacking one another, there has been research into snipping out the “anxiety” gene (or genes), fundamentally altering the nature of the animals so they passively accept being crammed into tighter and tighter quarters.

Oh, and for the record? The wares at WholeFoods are at best a marginal improvement over what’s on offer at your local megamart. That is also discussed in the same book.

If it weren’t abundantly clear by now, I strongly recommend that everybody just go read it already. :slight_smile:

128

[QUOTE=Szlater]
Ethical reasons?

I can understand being so disgusted with animal farming practices that you swear off any animal product. But, you might still miss your bacon sarnies or chicken curry so you find substitutes.

Personally, I think Quorn™ and other textured non-meat proteins taste nasty.
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I agree - and personally (for that’s all it can be), I think they’re pretty good (I’m not a vegetarian though, so I’m not likely to suffer tedium from eating them.

129

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
… there has been research into snipping out the “anxiety” gene (or genes), fundamentally altering the nature of the animals so they passively accept being crammed into tighter and tighter quarters.
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Now that’s interesting, and brings shades of Douglas Adams to the debate! Would an ethical vegetarian (or vegan) eat an animal that was not stressed by, but still raised under “horrible” conditions?

What about a suicidal animal, that desperately wanted to die and be eaten? :smiley:

130

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Not to keep beating the same drum, but there is a multi-chapter section in The Omnivore’s Dilemma examining a small farm where a moveable chicken coop is employed.

Basically, the whole farm is constructed something like a mechanical system, but with plants and animals instead of machines. Pasture is systematically fenced off, to allow grass to grow; cattle are allowed into small plots of pasture when the grass is ready, then moved on; the chicken coop is then moved onto those plots, where the chickens eat more grass as well as the maggots out of the cowpies, and their droppings add nitrogen to the soil; the coop is moved off the plot before the chickenshit “burns” the soil; and so on and so forth. And apparently, while this is highly intensive labor for the humans (both physically and analytically), the resulting level of production is very good, with almost zero chemical fertilizers or other “industrial” additions. Really fascinating stuff.
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I have not read this book yet, but this is basically what I am doing. This book by Joel Salatin is my chicken bible. I only have chickens, turkeys and goats right now, but I am planning on adding pigs and maybe sheep this spring. I also hope to get my Market Garden started. Personal reasons delayed that last year.

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
The book also includes some discussion of how industrially-farmed animals have been reduced to literal machines, rather than the above, where the natural inclinations of the animals are employed to serve specific roles. For example, in addition to the removal of beaks from chickens and tails from pigs to prevent the overstressed creatures from attacking one another, there has been research into snipping out the “anxiety” gene (or genes), fundamentally altering the nature of the animals so they passively accept being crammed into tighter and tighter quarters.

Oh, and for the record? The wares at WholeFoods are at best a marginal improvement over what’s on offer at your local megamart. That is also discussed in the same book.

If it weren’t abundantly clear by now, I strongly recommend that everybody just go read it already. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

Oh I do agree that commercial farm animals are so narrowly bred now that it is scary. I had a bunch of commercial broiler chickens this past summer. Once they reached the “ideal” weight and age, 6-7 lbs, 8-9 weeks, they actually started to die of probable heart attacks! WTF. And these poor buggers really couldn’t move very well, their breasts developed so fast, their legs couldn’t keep up to them. And I was using hormone and drug-free feed. It was sad actually, but if you intend to make any money from raising chickens, you really don’t have a lot of options regarding the breed of broiler chickens to raise.

I will put this book on my wish list.

131

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
I have not read this book yet, but this is basically what I am doing. This book by Joel Salatin is my chicken bible.
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That, in fact, is the guy whose farm is profiled in Omnivore’s Dilemma. If/when you read it, you’ll find an outsider’s report on what Salatin is doing. Probably won’t be as satisfying (and practically useful) as getting it directly from the source, but it’s a valuable perspective nevertheless. Besides, that’s only a fraction of the book; there’s a lot of other stuff covered.

132

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
Once they reached the “ideal” weight and age, 6-7 lbs, 8-9 weeks
[/QUOTE]

That’s quite slow for broiler chickens. They mature in 35-39 days (5-6weeks) normally.

133

[QUOTE=Szlater]
That’s quite slow for broiler chickens. They mature in 35-39 days (5-6weeks) normally.
[/QUOTE]

I was going with the info provided from my hatchery. (BROILERS/CORNISH ROCK GIANTS) I did get quite a few that were 10lbs+ and they were awesome, but I also lost a suprising amount to probable heart attacks.

I am Probably going to give the CORNISH CROSS a try this year. They will take a couple more weeks to finish, but they may be heartier.

134

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Now that’s interesting, and brings shades of Douglas Adams to the debate! Would an ethical vegetarian (or vegan) eat an animal that was not stressed by, but still raised under “horrible” conditions?
[/QUOTE]
Heh. I believe you are talking about Zombie Pigs!If you start a new thread, I’ll meanwhile ponder the ethics. :slight_smile:

135

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
That, in fact, is the guy whose farm is profiled in Omnivore’s Dilemma. If/when you read it, you’ll find an outsider’s report on what Salatin is doing. Probably won’t be as satisfying (and practically useful) as getting it directly from the source, but it’s a valuable perspective nevertheless. Besides, that’s only a fraction of the book; there’s a lot of other stuff covered.
[/QUOTE]

Well alright! I’m assuming he’s giving Joel a big thumb’s up. It’s kind of nice to know I’m bumbling my way in the right direction :wink:

136

[QUOTE=Maastricht]
Heh. I believe you are talking about Zombie Pigs!If you start a new thread, I’ll meanwhile ponder the ethics. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

As you wish.

137

The Daily Mail (UK paper) did an article in the wake of the Jamie Oliver show. They bought various intensively reared chickens and various free range birds, and had them identically prepared. Then a panel tasted them , not knowing which was which. The results?

138

[QUOTE=Maastricht]
The results?
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The results are that all the free-range birds except for one scored significantly better than the battery-farmed birds. The factory farmed birds scored 3/10 and 3.5/10. One free range bird scored 3.5/10, and the other two scored 6/10 and 7.5/10. Seems to me that the free range birds clearly scored better than the battery ones.

At any rate, I don’t buy free range birds because my local supermarket doesn’t carry them. A good cage-free, farm-raised bird tastes significantly better than a battery farmed one. Mass market chicken, for the most part, is pretty bland.

139

Since Olivers programme I have to say that I’ve noticed far more free range chickens on offer in my local Tesco.

Yes the “other” kind are still on sale but there seems to be far fewer of them, no longer are masses of them on offer at 2 for a fiver

140

I had the opposite, at least initially; you couldn’t buy a free range chicken in Sainsbury’s for love nor money for a week after the first show, at least not without getting up at 5am. Which was irksome, my having promised a Sunday roast to my flatmates.

What was really annoying was that not one of the squillion battery birds adorning the shelves came with giblets. Why the hell not? Is there a European giblet mountain languishing squishily somewhere in Kent? Have they genetically engineered out giblets from broiler hens? Buggered up my gravy something proper, that little oddity did.