From the Times 29-2-8
What if we all went organic? The
anti-battery farm brigade have got to do the maths
Funny old thing, the free market. It
acts like a bullshit detector for the false prophets of consumer research. Take
chicken. According to data gatherers, free range and organic birds are flying
off the shelves (not literally), sales are up and shoppers are fighting in the
aisles fuelled by a passion for ethically reared meat.
Yet down at my local supermarket, by
the organic chicken counter, it is tumbleweed time. And has been for a week or
so. I'm looking at three packs of organic, free-range chicken, should cost
£34.61, knocked down to £28.62, a reduction of 17.3 per cent. Next stop the
dump. Quite a big discount for the hot trolley item of the moment, don't you
think? Free-range birds were reduced, too. Whoosh, what was that? It was the
ethical eating spike, folks. Lasted about a month, until the Christmas Amex
bill kicked in.
Hey, don't look at me. We've eaten
organic for years. You won't find a bit of meat in my fridge that doesn't come
with a certificate of authenticity, maybe even a handwritten note from its mum.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the poultry consumers of
Approximately 885 square miles just for
chickens, to comply with the EU Poultry and Meat Market Regulations. No people
and, obviously, no predatory wildlife. A further vast area for feed, of course,
because the availability of food is key to the free range existence, as
chickens are not grazing animals. Thinking on it, the Lake District may be out,
as chickens are happiest on free-draining, south-facing pasture, which
minimises the build-up of worms and coccidial oocyst parasites. Maybe North
Devon would be happy to move.
Remember that programme about chickens
that Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall made? He raised 1,500 of them free-range. Ah,
bless. He should have given them names, like Gordon Ramsay did with his
turkeys. Hugh's flock represented 0.00009036 per cent of national consumption
and it still took 80 days to raise them. There are approximately 830 million
chickens reared in Britain each year and the same number imported, mostly as
portions, such as breast meat, for the catering trade.
Yet nobody in this great ethical debate
has asked those that are dictating its direction about the practicalities. How
exactly are 1,660,000,000 chickens going to be reared annually on a free-range
basis (actually 1,726,400,000 because free-range chicken have a premature
mortality rate of 4 per cent, meaning an additional 66,400,000 would be
required to cover the shortfall), adequately fed and cared for? Now, or in the
foreseeable future, it is simply not sustainable,
Chicken is simply a victim of its
success. It is relatively easy to keep, cost-effective, nutritious and
versatile. And it goes with everything. In the Italian cooking bible, Silver
Spoon, there are 99 recipes for chicken, compared with 34 for lamb. The Spanish
equivalent contains another 48. On the same page there is a recipe for breast
meat sautéed with grapefruit, another for a whole bird casseroled with beer and
onions. Find another protein-rich meat that performs across the board like
that. Beef with grapefruit, anyone? Cod with beer and onions? Chicken became a
working-class staple after myxomatosis killed 95 per cent of the British rabbit
population between 1953 and 1955. What could not have been expected is its
incredible adaptability as a food resource in modern society, hence its
popularity.
To rear chicken ethically, then, means
eschewing mass production and revolutionising the eating habits of a nation. It
is not about choosing free range. It is about not choosing anything. There
will, some weeks, be nothing to choose, because you cannot produce 17 million
of any species in one year solely free-range. The smug set will say the nation
should go back to treating meat as a luxury, but that will not happen, either.
There will have to be a competitively priced, resourceful alternative to
chicken, and the problem will start again.
It takes two years to set up a
free-range poultry farm - between 20,000 and 25,000 birds is the average - by
the time planning permission has been obtained, land cleared and building work
completed. That is one hell of a gamble for a farmer to take. In the aftermath
of a television campaign fronted by celebrity chefs, there was an upsurge in
free-range and organic sales, but the same market research groups that recorded
this will also confirm that 80 per cent of shoppers still list price as their
top priority.
Even if there was a way to make British
production free-range, it would be impossible to stop cheap imports arriving
from the rest of the EU, where subsidies aid French broiler houses. So there
will still be that choice: an ethical British chicken, or an inexpensive French
one. And how many have the time or inclination to investigate either way?
Free-range birds can still be reared primarily indoors, as long as there is
access to an open-air environment, which can equate to a small exit flap. Do
you know whether your free-range purchase has been subjected to those
conditions; or are you just reading a label and picturing a field of carefree
birds, happy to be turned into a pack of mini-fillets in return for 80 days of
roaming in the compulsorily purchased
They seem decent guys, these chefs. Their
hearts are in the right place. But, logistically, it might be better if we take
one, small free-range step at a time; because if the entire country got an
attack of food ethics overnight, we really would be stuffed.