Chicken Run

I applaud this compelling show and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall determination to highlight the serious issue of intensive hen farming and the national supermarkets seemingly blatant support of this dire practice.

Two chickens on a buy one get one free offer for just £5.00? That’s just £2.50 each. I’m seriously considering keeping chickens here at North Lodge, I’ve done my home work and I’ve learned that I can not buy live, clucking, happy chickens for £2.50 each. But in my local Tesco’s I can: killed, plucked and beautifully packaged complete with cooking instructions. Something ‘aint quite right.

And this is where the problem lies: Supermarkets are setting unrealistically cheap prices for produce through intensive farming which we as consumers are beginning to accept as a standard. Farm shops are NOT expensive. Free range is NOT expensive. It is realistically priced. Please do not be misled by supermarket pricing; they are systematically brainwashing us consumers into believing that £2.50 is how much a chicken should cost and then confining the organic, ethically produced food to the expensive, exclusive Organic Shelf.

Comments from the Axminster Single Mother is typical; “But I can’t afford to buy free range”. I know there are people who are on such a tight budget that they genuinely can not afford to buy free range (I myself have certainly been in that situation), but I wouldn’t mind betting, with just a little education, that most can. A quick peruse through their shopping trolley will confirm this.

I was at a friend’s for dinner just the other evening and we had this same debate. I asked to view the contents of my friends ‘fridge: two whole chickens (two for a fiver), some diced chicken ‘stir fry’ and a packet of chicken breasts. Total cost well over a tenner.

I inquired why? The perhaps not so surprising answer was, whole chickens for Sunday roast (will probably only use one the other will be frozen), the chicken pieces were for a curry that called for chicken strips and the breasts were for some ghastly Worrall-Thompson typically over-complicated recipe that involved chicken breasts and about nine million other ingredients.

I could have got the meat for all three meals plus a chicken soup to boot from just one free range chicken priced at around £6.

It seems that consumers have lost the concept of cuts of meat and actually believe that diced chicken is different meat to that on a whole bird. And the whole bird is exclusively for roasting on a Sunday.

It’s a similar story with eggs. Half a dozen intensively produced ‘value’ eggs will cost around 73 pence; that’s about 12 pence an egg. The same number of free range from a farmers shop will cost around 90 pence, or 15 pence an egg. Is an extra 3 pence really that much? And here’s the thing; how many of us buy a box of eggs just to fry up a couple for breakfast and then ultimately throw the remainder away unused? It’s a false economy. Go to your local farmers shop and ask for just two eggs and chances are they’ll happily sell you them; just try doing that at your local Tescos. So fulfilling your egg needs in this way can actually save you money.

Of course some people won’t have the time or inclination to do this and prefer the convenience of the supermarkets, and that’s their prerogative; but if you really do care about how your food is produced please don’t hide behind the excuse of cost. Learn how to joint a chicken and try out a few recipes.

And why not take a trip to your local farm shop? You might actually be surprised how much you get for your money; not only in quality but also in quantity. Even if you do not give a toss about animal welfare, organics or food miles or any of that other ‘green’ stuff, just try it out anyway; it’s a much more enjoyable shopping experience, you’ll without doubt get better produce, you might actually just save yourself some money and the best thing is you will put a stop to the national supermarkets taking you for a twat.