Government Plans to Make Conditions WORSE for Chickens

The fantastic Compassion in World Farming has launched a campaign to stop a disgraceful new EU law coming into force in Britain. The law, which is set to come into force in 2010, allows increased stocking densities for meat chickens.

Defra currently recommends (but doesn't require) a maximum stocking density of 34kg/m² (15-17 chickens per square metre), but the new EU law will allow a stocking density of an incredible 42kg/m²- that's up to 21 chickens in 1 square metre of space.

The EU has once again completely abandoned animal welfare issues in face of pressure from farmers and supermarkets. We have to ask ourselves: Where will this end? Is the EU going to continuously increase maximum stocking densities in this ridiculous exercise of making chicken the cheapest food on earth? Or will Governments, one day, realise that chickens are animals - sentient beings - and that the ever-increasing intensity of factory farming is becoming ever-increasingly immoral?

Sales of higher welfare chicken are up 42% in the UK, but any attempt to improve welfare is undermined by:

1) The refusal of governments to force retailers to inform consumers of the way their meat is raised, and;

2) The completely unsustainable moves towards ever more intensive farming methods.

This cycle has to broken now, before we completely lose sight of the moral implications of our 'modern' farming systems. Please sign up to support CIWF's campaign and stop this mad, mad law.

Why Are Retailers Allowed to Mislead Us?

We are, supposedly, a nation of animal lovers. We love our pets and we give generously to animal charities, yet we continue to buy vast quantities of intensively reared meat that causes untold cruelty to millions of animals. One of the big reasons for this dichotomy is simply that most people are ignorant of the conditions in which the animals they eat are raised.

Intensively reared chickens at retailers like Tesco often don't even say that they were kept indoors, never mind informing the consumer of the cruelty involved in the process. In fact they often, in my opinion, actively mislead, with quaint photos of farmers standing outside and a description of how these chickens are raised to the 'highest welfare standards'.

It is a disgrace that in 2009 Britain, our retailers are allowed to get away with this.

It is in the interests of us all that we spend our money as informed consumers so that we can truly make a free choice as to what we buy.

The 'Chicken Out' campaign has been running a competition on its website to come up with a label for intensively reared chickens which properly allows consumers to know exactly what they are buying.

Take a look at the winning entry here.

There is also a link on the site to email your MP to encourage them to sign an Early Day Motion on this very subject.

John Lewis: setting the standard.

As a former employee of the John Lewis Partnership I already knew what a truly conscientious and forward thinking company they are. This has just been confirmed.

Before christmas I was having lunch in a John Lewis store and I noticed that the egg used for their omelettes was 'pasteurised egg' from the catering company brakes. Having worked in the catering industry, I know that unless specified as otherwise, eggs used will almost undoubtedly be from caged hens (want to know what the problem is? See here). They're cheap, and so is much of the food that catering companies supply. 

Knowing the commitment to animal welfare that the Partnership has, I was quite shocked by this. 

I wrote to them, and received a rather inadequate and ambivalent response. I obviously therefore wrote to them again. This time the results were much more promising (see picture below). They confirmed that since my first letter it has become possible for them to source free range pasteurised egg for use in their omelettes. 

Every decision like this, however small it seems, saves thousands of animals from living a life of pain and suffering.

Click to enlarge.

If only our biggest retailers shared even a fraction of their ethical code.

What do our Political Parties think about factory farming?

With many big retailers (namely Tesco and Asda), and virtually the whole of the catering industry failing dismally to make substantial improvements to animal welfare by committing to higher standards for standard poultry, will legislators do anything to help animals? To know that, we need to know what the three main Political Parties believe.

Labour

New Labour came to power in 1997 with good intentions on animal welfare. They stated that:

"Labour will place a new emphasis on improved husbandry, and less intensive production". 

They have now had nearly 12 years to implement these good intentions, but unfortunately they have almost universally failed. While I continually try to get information from Ministers on where they think the future will take us, it is like trying to get blood from a stone.

Instead, one receives endless monotonous letters from the ominous sounding 'Central Communications Unit' at defra which give no revealing insight, and unfortunately often try to defend factory farming. 

Update (9-2-09): On re-reading this, I thought it left too negative an impression. Labour clearly retain good intentions on this issue, and they have pushed for multilateral action at a European level, as well as acting unilaterally in Britain by, for example, banning sow stalls. Yet one can't escape the fact they have been in power for 12 years, and in many respects things have got worse.

Liberal Democrats

I have to declare an interest here as a member of the Lib Dems, but I promise I am trying to be objective, as to an extent this is an issue that transcends UK party politics.

However the Lib Dems do have clear policies to improve the welfare of farm animals. There is plenty of stuff around on the web in terms of Lib Dem policy on this area, such as this from Lib Dem Europe Leader, Graham Watson MEP.

Also, below is a letter from Chris Huhne MP from the time when he was Lib Dem shadow Environment Secretary in which he sets out his views.

Conservatives

Unfortunately this section is going to be short because I can find no evidence on the web of any Conservative policy on factory farming, or any examples of Conservative elected representatives' views. I did write to the Shadow Environment Secretary, Peter Ainsworth MP on the 9th December 2008, and have received only an acknowledgement of receipt of my email, but as yet no reply. I will of course post it if/when I receive it.

A Cabinet of chickens?

Yesterday I sent this letter to all 24 members of the Cabinet. Recent attempts at getting answers and opinions from our leaders on this have been distinctly unsuccessful, and this attempt will probably be the same. Nevertheless, as and when I receive responses over the next few weeks, I will post them on here for all to see!

The humble chicken

The world is getting smaller, populations are getting larger, developed countries eat too much meat, and substantial corporate ethical policies are few and far between. 

These are some of the main reasons that most of the chickens and pigs we eat today are products of modern intensive factory farming. As a nation, and as a world, we have to decide where we want to go now, and there are only two options. We either continue on the slippery slope of increasingly intensive farming, driven by price wars on the flesh of living creatures by retailers. Or we make a conscious decision to do the opposite, and drag ourselves out of the furious cycle of farming intensivation of recent decades.

The former is the easy option, the latter is difficult one. And it will be a difficult one. It requires sacrifice on behalf of the Consumer and the Corporations, a concept which is rarely popular.

But if Gandhi was right when he said that"[t]he greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated" then we've a long way to go if we want to be great again.