Jamie Oliver Campaigns For Chicken Welfare
by Caroline Gammell
Two of Britain's best-known chefs are mounting a campaign to persuade people not to eat battery-reared chickens.
Jamie Oliver has made a television programme on the appalling conditions in which many of the birds live and hopes to encourage supermarkets to invest in better-treated birds such as free range or organic.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, his friend and fellow chef, has also made a series exposing the horrors of battery farming.
They hope their combined efforts will draw attention to the suffering of the birds and the poor quality of the meat.
In some supermarkets, entire chickens can be bought for as little as £2.50, while recent figures from the RSPCA showed that only five per cent of the birds in Britain were kept in high welfare conditions.
Oliver, who campaigned against unhealthy school dinners in 2005, examines the poultry industry in his one-off programme Jamie's Fowl Dinners on Channel 4 on Jan 11.
In front of invited guests, he will show a series of films and interviews explaining how the birds are killed and their brutal living conditions.
At one stage he examines the 39-day life of a battery-reared chicken and says: "It's disgusting, the smell is awful. Why would anyone want to eat these birds, who are walking in their own faeces."
Oliver's aim is to get rid of the cheapest chicken meat.
"My ambition is to change the 95 per cent of Britain eating standard chicken; to get them to step up to a better-welfare bird. I would say: buy British and buy the best welfare bird you can afford."
High-welfare birds are not necessarily free range or organic but they are given more space, a place to perch, better lighting and longer nights.
Oliver's campaigning success in the past has been formidable. His drive to rid school canteens of unhealthy food - Turkey Twizzlers were a particular target - led Tony Blair's Government to pledge an extra £280?million over three years to improve food standards.
In Fearnley-Whittingstall's three-part Hugh's Chicken Run, which is on Channel 4 starting on Jan 7, the chef tries to ensure that more than 50 per cent of chicken bought and eaten in his local town - Axminster in Devon - over the space of a week is free range.
That includes all curry houses, burger bars and pubs in the area.
In seeking to understand the nature of chicken farming, he rears his own battery chickens alongside free-range birds.
This week, the RSPCA urged shoppers to pay a little extra to ensure that the poultry they bought had been bred in decent conditions and called for retailers to sell only higher welfare chicken by 2010. Of the 855 million chickens reared for their meat in Britain every year, the majority are kept in cramped, dimly-lit spaces.
Marc Cooper, an RSPCA farm animal scientist, said: "If people knew how the average chicken was treated before it ended up as their Sunday roast, they would probably be disgusted."
© 2007 The Telegraph
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肉雞(meat chicken)：
• Chicken is Britain's most popular meat
• We eat 12 times as much chicken as we did 30 yrs ago
Our perpetual demand means that not only is it mass produced, it is also dirt cheap:
• 855 million chickens are produced in the UK every year
• Supermarkets are selling whole birds for as little as £2
• Pound for pound that's cheaper than some dog food 比狗食還便宜，人類是該悲哀還是...？
But this low unit cost is not necessarily good for the farmer or the birds.
• Every day 100,000 birds die in standard chicken farms due to poor welfare conditions
一天當中因為環境不好而死亡的機高達10萬隻
蛋雞(egg laying hens)：
• We eat over 10 billion eggs a year in the UK
• As well as being sold whole, eggs are present as an ingredient in a number of foods including mayonnaise, biscuits and even wine
在節目中看到那些蛋黃跟蛋白被分離，再組合成廚師需要的形狀，或是加工成全蛋液方便使用，看完之後真的覺得很噁心。麥當勞早餐的荷包蛋不會是這樣來的吧？不然怎麼能這麼奇形怪狀？別以為你在超市買到的沙拉是正常的水煮蛋，那是一條長條型的組合但切片而成的。
• 86% of these eggs still come from battery caged hens who do not have the freedom to express natural behaviour i.e. dust bathe, forage, roost & nest
這個活動的網址：http://www.supportchickennow.co.uk/freedomfood/index.html
你吃的雞怎麼來的？
Lifecycle of an intensively reared chicken 一般標準雞(95%)
Day old chicks
In about six weeks, these day-old chicks will be ready for consumption.
Sorting chicksJust hatched,
these chicks are sorted onto conveyor belts and packed into crates on their way to rearing sheds. Except on execptional farms, a free-range chick will be treated the same as an intensively farmed chick for roughly the first two weeks.
A recent EU directive has been put in place to measure the welfare of intensively reared chickens.
3 week old chickens
These chickens are three weeks old. The build-up of faeces can contribute to the strong smell of ammonia in the sheds and result in breast blisters on some animals.
Lame chicken
These chickens are bred and fed to grow rapidly and are slaughtered before reaching maturity. Fast growth can sometimes result in health problems. 
Collecting chickens for slaughter
At six weeks the chickens are caught by hand, packed into crates and transported for processing. Both free-range and intensively reared chickens are caught and transported using the same methods.
Chickens hanging ready for culling
These chickens are ready to be slaughtered and processed. Except in some high welfare instances, free-range and intensively reared chickens are slaughtered using the same methods
The end product
The average intensively reared chicken produced for meat in the UK is about 42 days old and weighs more than two kilos. Intensive production practices focus on keeping costs low, and although this chicken retails at £4.09, with 'buy-one-get-one-free' offers a whole chicken can be found in the supermarket for as little as £2.50 .
Lifecycle of a free-range chicken 自由豢養雞(5%)
1 - 2 week old chicks
Except on a few exceptional farms, for roughly the first two weeks of its life, a free-range chick will be treated in the same way as an intensively farmed chick.
2 - 4 week old chicks
Government standards permit a stocking density of 38 kg/m² in intensive farms. Free-range standards limit this to 27.5 kg/m². For an average 2kg bird this equates to 19 birds per m² in an intensive farm and 13 birds per m² in free-range farms.
2 - 4 week old chicks
Free-range chicks are first allowed to roam outside at around 2 weeks old.
4 - 5 week old chicks
Free-range standards mean that chickens have to access to the outdoors for at least half of their lives. They are shut up in the sheds at night.
Being free-range gives chickens a chance to perch and roam in woodland. Habits they are thought to have inherited from their jungle fowl ancestors.
圖片來源：CIWF; Ellis, Hattie, 'Planet Chicken', London, 2007 (p.188)
(來自網站：http://www.channel4.com/)
這些標準雞豢養的室內充斥著他們的排泄物，JAMMIE到那參觀時也覺得臭氣沖天，AMMONIA的濃度很高，甚至開始腐蝕這些標準雞的爪子，以下這張圖片擷取自RSPCA 2008年出版的welfare standards for chickens的附件
有些雞因為生長速度過快(每天65公克)，導致骨骼發育不完全的腿無法荷重而攤坐在地上。
以下是十分骯髒的羽毛，一樣擷取自RSPCA 2008年出版的welfare standards for chickens的附件
這些標準雞平均壽命只有39天，你能想像你活在這世界上39天，而且是極惡劣的環境，擁擠、骯髒、惡臭、不見天日、病痛...然後39天到了，就是準備死亡嗎？雖然他們是被養來吃的沒錯，他們該過什麼樣的生活？有什麼樣的環境？到頭來還不是一樣被吃掉，如果我們能多花幾塊錢，購買自由豢養雞(free fenced)或是有機雞(organic)，他們會有不一樣的生命。JAMMIE說，我知道要指責、批評養雞工業的人很簡單，但我從來都不知道他們也不願意這麼做，而且做得很辛苦，他們每天與雞生活在一起，更希望這些雞能有更好的環境，但事實上，他們每賣出一隻雞能賺到的，只有幾塊錢，利潤低得出乎意料。因此，我想，要改善這個現象，最基本的還是要改變消費習慣，我們吃的雞肉，實在太多了，而且我們花費的價錢，實在太低了，我們該珍惜食物。
後記：看了那一小時的節目，真的會讓你想哭。 圖片呈現的還是不夠SHOCK，DISCOVERY的TRAVEL & LIVING最近在播這一集，希望有多一點人能看到。但是在台灣，應該還沒有像英國一樣可以在購買時利用標籤得知雞肉的豢養方式，所以，我們也只能看看而已。 還是少吃ㄧ點雞排跟鹹酥雞好了，看完這個節目有點噁心，也不太想吃雞肉了。 但是過個兩三天之後，我應該還是一樣在吃雞排吧...
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