Chicken Welfare, Supermarkets and Food security.

Last year I posted regarding a television campaign by a “Celebrity” chef regarding the poor welfare standards of the standard chicken.

I became a vegetarian back in the late 1970s as a direct response to the fact that with the poor welfare standards of industrialised factory farming along with the hidden practices that looked dumb. By dumb I mean feeding cattle animal protein from dead diseased sheep. While hindsight is a wonderful thing and we now all know that caused “Mad Cow Disease”, but then no one believed me when I spoke of it. I had one memorable conversation where I was having the urine extracted from me without the use of a catheter, I was told that I knew nothing and that Cows were only fed on Grass.

It shows how little people really know about our food and where it comes from. I remained a Vegetarian for twenty five years, but as the situation changed and there were farmers that were avoiding these nasty practices, the only way that they can be supported is via buying meat from these businesses. After all unless these farmers get sales for these quality products, they will not be able to maintain these standards. Even now, l still personally choose a diet that is strongly a vegetarian one. When I buy a chicken it is free range as I do with my eggs. I used to keep chickens myself and there is a real difference in taste from an intensively reared bird to one that is free range.

Anyway, last night was a follow up programme on that campaign and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall attempted to get the largest supermarket, Tesco, to commit to improving the welfare standards for intensively reared birds. Almost all the other major food retailers have already made that commitment, and some have already stopped selling chickens that are reared to the minimum legal standard. The higher welfare standard is based upon standards set by the RSPCA, an Animal welfare Charity, freedom foods. These are still intensively reared birds but are a marked improvement on the basic standard. There is an extra cost and this improved system ads less than one pound to the retail cost in the supermarket.

While I personally would prefer that all chickens were free range, I am also realistic and understand that some people are so poor that they cannot afford free range. But I would argue that paying an extra pound, making the cost four pounds for a chicken instead of three, a price worth paying.

This is simply because the supermarkets have used their power to force farmers in the UK to produce food at the price that it can be produced in the developing world. When farmers are told that if they cannot produce a chicken that sells for three pounds, it was a penny under two pounds for a while, they will buy them from China or other parts of Asia. The farmer, who has all of their business riding on these contracts, is forced to drop the standards to the lowest legal minimum. I strongly suspect that when farmers have been found to be breaking the law and keeping their livestock below the legal minimum, it has been where the farmer has been forced to cut costs via this pressure. After all, the farmer only makes one penny per bird in this Faustian deal.

This drive by the supermarkets for cheap food at all costs actually endangers our health and will lead to higher food prices and more importantly place at risk our food security. If UK farmers cannot make a living, they will eventually leave farming. Then if we have to rely on produce from overseas, we risk all sorts of poor practice. With domestic production the rules restrict the use of anti biotics. While the rules are different in other countries and controls are outside of our hands, we could find our food has residues that impact on our health. We only need to look at the scandal of the melamine in the milk in China to see that we could end up with a crisis when we rely upon overseas suppliers. Also if we no longer have poultry farming if there were a sudden shortage or a sudden increase in shipping costs, then in Britain we would find that we are paying much more for chicken. While the price of oil has fallen from its high last year, it had the effect of doubling the price of basic foods in various parts of the world.

While I do not want to see a command and control economic model, such as occurred in Communist states like the Soviet Union, it ruins economies you only have to look at North Korea to see that. But unrestrained Free Trade only benefits the largest players and is unfair trade. With food in particular there has to be some degree of national protectionism. Each country needs to have an agricultural industry that feeds its nations people first. It then earns foreign currency by selling it surplice. While I know that in the real world it is more complex than that, but those need to be the basic principles that govern the food trade.

The way that the supermarkets like Tesco, the third largest retailer in the world, are operating is extremely short sighted. While their corporate spin says that they are committed to animal welfare standards, in reality they are committed to the lowest standards that will make them a profit. Nor do they care about the farmers that supply them. Continuing on this track they will find that they are demolishing the farming industries that it relies on. Also, while people are feeling the effect of the economic downturn, when the economy picks up Tesco, in particular, are likely to see people reject them and their claims.

The supermarkets have never been that cheep, a good Greengrocer is normally cheaper, as is a local butcher. I think that one of the effects of this economic down turn will be that people will look at the way they shop. Supermarkets are convenient and often people have gone there because of their location rather than any other reason.

In the years to come there will be a shift towards smaller local suppliers, if the supermarkets don’t start really improving quality and standards then they will never get bailed out the way the banking system has. Government also needs to bare some of the blame as for years Food standards and nutrition has been abdicated to the major retailers, and look what’s happened we have an obesity crisis.

Just like the banks, lending money to people that cannot repay, selling crap food and driving down standards is never a long lasting or good business model. Tesco needs to start trading ethically and fairly. If they don’t they will be left behind as the green economic revolution has already started.