Oli Gibson

One of the questions thats puzzled people for many years is what came first the chicken or the egg? This post, unfortunately, isn’t the answer to that question but it does shed a little light onto where your chicken and your eggs now come from and how far removed that is from the humble chicken and the egg debate.

First off I’ll say this post was inspired by a TV program by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver released in 2008. You can watch this very informative program on youtube and I highly recommend giving over an hour of your time. I can assure you it will change your buying habits for good.

So what comes first the chicken or the egg?

Chickens bred for meat are entirely different to those bred to lay eggs. Industrially reared meat chickens are kept on the floor in sheds whilst their egg-laying equivalents are kept in tiered cages. The two industries are completely separate.

Shockingly 95% of meat chickens and 63% of egg-laying hens are still intensively farmed in this country (2008). The welfare implications for the birds as a result of our persistent demand for cheap food are huge but it’s not just the birds lives which are bad. Battery farmed chickens are sometimes kept in such bad conditions that eating them can have detrimental effects on our health not to mention the lack of flavor due to their shortened life spans.

A Few Facts on Meat Chickens

• 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

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

A Few Facts on 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
• 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

How to Make a Difference?

Now I understand that not everyone is as bothered about where their food comes from as me but if any of what you’ve just read has had an affect on you and you would like to make a change in your eating habits to help reduce battery farming in the UK or would like to consume better quality chicken and eggs have a look at my buying tips.

• Try to buy the best welfare bird you can afford. Just make sure it is British farmed. If you live in another country, support your local farmers there. Local farmers need local money and support to survive. The poultry industry in Britain is in danger of not existing in 20 years time if we do not make changes now.

• Look out for the RSPCA’s Freedom Food logo or an equivalent higher-welfare bird. I’m really hoping supermarkets will change and use the standards of the RSPCA Freedom Food to replace what we call the “standard bird” which currently represents 95% of chickens consumed in this country.

• In my view there are currently four levels of chicken – there is organic chicken at the top, free range underneath, higher-welfare birds next and then the standard chicken at the bottom.

• You don’t have to eat chicken every day. In Britain we eat meat six-to-seven times a week while many other some European nationalities only eat meat three-to-four times a week. So consider cutting down on the amount of chicken you consume and just have better, nicer chicken when you have it.

• Try buying a whole bird. Most chicken in this country is consumed via pre-packed food like chicken breasts and – I cannot stress this enough – this is the most expensive way to buy chicken. If you buy a whole chicken then there are million things you can do with it. You can probably get two meals out of a bird that feeds four people. That’s eight whole portions of dinner from one bird… which is really good value!

• You don’t necessarily have to spend more when you buy chicken. You could be clever and use cheaper cuts like the legs and thighs. Free range or organic chicken legs and thighs are often pretty close in price to intensively-bred chicken breasts, so look for them.

• When it comes to buying eggs I definitely don’t think anyone should be buying eggs from caged hens. There is barely any difference in price at all between a standard egg and a free range egg, so buy free range or organic eggs, it’s the right thing to do!

If you would like to find out more about anything I discussed here in this post check out the Chicken Out Campaign @ www.chickenout.tv

This article is about a subject I am very passionate about and one that is now being hotly contested by many large companies. I have written this article about the American food system simply because there is the most information available. It is not a problem that is exclusive to America, it is also a problem in the UK and other countries in the world.but I hope that with education we can erase the issue.

I believe it is our right to have good food available at honest prices. At the end of the day food is the fuel that powers our body and provides the energy to build new cells. We truly are made up of what we eat. With this in mind it would make sense that the government would want a nation eating the best possible quality of food that would keep it’s countries citizens fit, healthy and most importantly productive. You would then also expect that the company you work for or the school your children go to would also want you to have access to the best quality food. By keeping you and your children healthy they and the country will ultimately make more money and spend less money on healthcare. To me this seems like common sense but it appears I am in a minority as the American government and a number of multi-national American companies clearly think differently. I am going to show you the side of the American food industry they don’t want you to see.

As population grows around the world the way we produce enough food to feed everyone has come under pressure. In America today people eat 200lb of meat per person each year. This simply wouldn’t have been possible fifty years ago but food production technologies have changed so dramatically that we can produce meat at industrial levels. All this seems great, it’s feeding the nation, except for one small problem. The industry is run by companies more interested in their bottam line than the quality of their products.

Approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys,lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the US annually. Almost everyone of these animals is sold by one of the big four meat companies and like many businesses they are competing to serve you, the consumer. The problem is that consumers are demanding lower and lower prices. Prices so low that it would be impossible to rear the animals in a natural way. Hence the development of factory farming. Almost all of these 10 billion animals are raised on factory farms. To make full use of the space available as many animals are packed into the farms as possible but that just gives us another problem, there’s not enough grass to feed the animals. To solve this the animals are fed corn which also makes them grow fatter quicker. Thats convenient isn’t it? For example if you feed a chicken corn it can be at a size big enough to take to slaughter in 48 days compared to the 3 months it would usually take. This means that farmers can produce almost double the amount of chickens in this way but it also means that the chicken on your plate is not as healthy as you thought it was.

So factory farming means we have to feed animals different food. Not the best situation admittedly but not the end of the world either. However there is another issue with factory farming. With so many animals in one place there is a huge amount of manure produced. On a natural farm this helps add nutrients to the fields where the grass grows and then the animals eat the grass but on a factory farm this waste is just left. Animals end up living in their own excrement and where there is that much feces there is also disease. Once one animal gets sick they all do simply because they all live so close together and it is these animals that end up on your plate sometimes causing tragedies.

In 2001 two year old Kevin Kowalcyk ate a hamburger with his parents. Twelve days later he was dead. The cause of his death was E.coli O157:H7 which is the pathogenic form of the normally benign form of E.coli bacteria thats found in the gut. Kevin’s death was preventable. The meat that he ate was contaminated due to factory farming and industrial processing’s cost savings. E.coli is often spread by fecal matter both at the slaughterhouse and on the farm and the lack of hygienic conditions ultimately lead to a mother losing her son.

It is estimated that illnesses such as E.coli sicken an estimated 76 million Americans each year and cause 5000 deaths. Considering this statistic you would expect the industry to be closely monitored but you would be wrong. In 1972 the FDA conducted 50,000 food safety inspections, however in 2006 only 9,164 took place. It could be argued that Americans are not being protected at the most basic level.

America is the most obese nation on the planet. That is not an opinion or a statement. That is a fact. One third off all children and adolescents are overweight or obese and that number is only going to rise. We are entering an era where parents may out live their own children due to the food they eat. Taking a snapshot of the average diet in America and we can see that it is mainly made up of high calorie, sugar laden processed foods. Couple this with the sedentary lifestyles that most people live and it’s clear why waist-sizes are ballooning. This is not about esthetics. This is about the serious health issues that obesity causes.like diabetes, heart ailments and cancer. Here are just a few statistics thats shocked me about the situation.

• 67% of Americans are overweight with 30.1% being obese
• 7.8% of Americans have diabetes, many of these cases are preventable
• Over the last 20 years obesity in children aged 6 – 11 has almost tripled from 6.5% to 19.6%
• Every third person born in 2000 will have type 2 diabetes as an adult
• Obesity and physical inactivity may account for 25 to 30 percent of colon, breast (postmenopausal), endometrial, kidney, and cancer of the esophagus.

The unfortunate fact is it is cheaper to eat unhealthily in America than it is to eat healthily due to the subsidies that the government and private companies place on some products. However comparing the prices on the supermarket shelves will never show the real cost. In a country where you pay for your healthcare you are essentially deciding weather to pay now or later when you buy the cheaper, unhealthy food in the supermarket. It is impossible to guess at which choice ends up cheaper in the long run but if you value your own life at any level eating healthily now is the clear financial winner.

Ultimately the choice is in the your hands. This isn’t how the world needs to be and consumers have the power to change this situation, since companies are there to make money. If you don’t buy their products they will no longer sell them. This is about making a choice for yourself, to live a healthier and longer life but also about helping others. You can help educate and pass on the knowledge you now have of the food industry along with demanding the government to take America’s food needs more seriously. I believe change is needed but my belief is worthless without many millions more people believing the same thing.

If you found this article interesting and would like to find out more check out the links below.

Food Inc – Brilliant documentary about just this subject, a must watch.
Take Part – The best place on the web to find out more and get involved.
Jamie’s Food Revolution – Another great show by the TV chef and shows the problem in schools.