I firmly believe that all birds should be kept in good conditions. Everyone believes this, don’t they?
We all believe that animals should be kept in clean conditions with free access to the outside, plenty of room to roam and behave naturally. In other words, Free Range. Nothing gladdens the heart more than to see chooks wandering around a farmyard, pecking and scratching and being…chickens. Well I realise this is not always possible or desirable.
My chickens live outside in a field and they have a wonderful hen house made by Forsham Cottage Arks (I can recommend them highly). They are shut up each night and the field in which they run around has electric poultry netting so they are safe from foxes during the day and night. I’ve had the chickens now for around four years and so far haven’t lost any to foxes. But mine are pretty much pets; they give us a few eggs and they’re fun to watch – none end up on the table, not because I don’t believe in eating meat but because I have a problem (hypocritical I know) with eating an animal I’ve known and named.Now when it comes to buying chicken to eat I am prepared to buy the best quality; free range from a known source – a local farmer, or organic if I can’t get any locally.
I don’t agree with the whole organic thing; to my mind a good deal of the ethics behind organic produce is a western hypocrisy – we can afford to buy agrochemicals yet chose to purchase products that do not have them….Many parts of the world where famine is a regular occurrence would willingly have those same agrochemicals or indeed GM if they could afford them….Aside from which, the whole word Organic means many different things – it does not mean chemical free. Some pesticides are licensed as organic, for example Nicotine…yes, the same poisonous stuff in cigarettes – but it is organic.
If you’re after truly pesticide free food either grow your own or else find out where your nearest Bio-dynamic farm is – they’re often attached to Rudolf Steiner schools. But why avoid pesticides? If you use soaps, deodorants, shampoos, drink alcohol, take drugs, the list goes on….if you do all of these things, particularly the ones that involve direct application to the skin…why are you avoiding eating food which has been sprayed with minute amounts of chemicals? If you’re still set on eating only organic then for god’s sake eat local organic – here in the UK there is no point in eating organic food from New Zealand – as good as it may be…but the food miles clocked up to get it here totally negates any ethical position you may take over organic produce. And while you may guarantee food from NZ, Australia, the US and pretty much all of Europe may be truly organic, the rules and regulations regarding organic status for farms varies around the world. Here the Soil Association is very strict; farms have to be free of non organic sprays for some time – years, not months. In some parts of the world this is not the case and food you may believe to have been cultivated organically has in fact been grown using traditional spray methods, perhaps even to lower standards than allowed here in the EU, and the organic status granted recently.
Right, back to the chickens….
They should not be kept in conditions akin to concentration camps; battery farms should be outlawed – and in fact that is the plan as I understand it, but not until 2012. Fox hunting? Illegal…a wild animal, a predator living free and hunted, sometimes unsuccessfully by a group of people dressed up. Chickens in battery farms? Legal….a domestic animal, reared entirely for food, kept in appalling conditions, not allowed freedom of movement, daylight or any form of natural life. And we, the Great British public, the animal lovers, we allow this. We positively encourage it, how? By purchasing cheap meat and cheap eggs. If you believe yourself to be an animal lover, buy only free range, locally produced chicken and eggs so you can reassure yourself that those animals have had a natural life.
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