apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

no one likes reality checks. especially me.

my grandparents had an egg farm in Massachusetts way back in the day (they were Finns, it was called Turkki's Chicken Farm heheh). i don't remember details, but i do know that my mother has been a vegetarian since she was a teensy kid because of seeing how things really are - instead of that tasty chicken appearing on the table as if from thin air, she had to see it die first. most people can handle that - the normal way of things - but some just cannot. i don't think she's 'overly' sensitive. i like to think she's a conscientious objector :)

i'm so far removed from the source of my food and products that one taste of reality and i feel like crying.

It seems a little counterproductive to perpetuate the brutality you're supposedly protesting.

Jamie Oliver succeeded in shocking his audience, but that doesn't mean he made a constructive contribution to the debate over farming methods. At the end of the day, it's pretty useless and senseless.

WHY did he feel the need to do this?????? HOW does this make a positive impact??? Poor chicks.

I am so sick of cruelty to animals.

I'm so glad I made the choice to go vegetarian last year. This was just painful to watch.

And I completely agree with hazelnut_spread's view of this demonstration. Useless and senseless.

I am a little confused by this. I am all about having people know where their food comes from in order to make educated choices, but this program seems to condemn every method of chicken farming that we have available to us as consumers (in what is, in my opinion, a overly sensational manner). Yet, Jamie has plenty of chicken and egg recipes of his own. Is he suggesting that we never eat chicken or eggs, or making a comment about how chicken farming should change?

What Jamie Oliver did was to try to bring him to people the reality of their food choices.

"Oliver, who won plaudits for his campaign to improve school meals, wants to raise awareness about intensively-farmed birds. Jamie's Fowl Dinners urges consumers and retailers to switch to birds reared under better welfare conditions.

He said: "I think if even a small percentage of people watching were informed and decided to shop differently as a result that would make a real difference.

"I don't think it is sensational to show people the reality of how chickens live and die at the moment. It may be upsetting for some people, but that's how things are. And if seeing some of the practices helps to change the shopping habits of just five per cent of people watching, then it will be worth it."

A vet and a stockman were on hand in the studio to look after the welfare of the animals."

Meant to add that he has been a patron of the Battery Hens Welfare Trust for years, which rescues battery hens from appalling conditions, and brings them back to life.

http://www.bhwt.org.uk/adopt_some_hens.php

(cat deleted it)

Was this brutal? Perhaps, but no more so than chicken production on the whole. Why is this demonstration any worse? And if it is not, then why do people only seem to get upset when it is on television? If you object to this, I hope you eat no chicken or chicken eggs whatsoever, whether from an industrial source, or a small, local farmer. Otherwise you are supporting the very practices shown here.

People should be conscious of the unpleasant but necessary aspects of their food production. If they find that one or more steps in the production of some foods unethical, they should not eat those foods. Ignorance is no excuse.

(And does anyone really think that, if not for this demonstration, those chicks would have grown up into healthy, happy chickens? They were doomed to this fate, or worse, from the moment they were born; at least by illuminating this practice their deaths could be put to some purpose.)

Nicholas -- I do object to killing chickens (I did not watch the video because I don't want to see it) and I do not eat chickens. I eat chicken eggs, which I don't see as supporting these practices, but I buy them from a local farm.

Even your tiny local farm will kill the males. What do you think they do with them? Provide them with free room and board for their entire lives? They're useless except as food. You're completely out of touch with how farming works if you think otherwise.

Again, if you find this video objectionable, you'd best be a vegan. I applaud him for pushing this in people's faces.

I have nothing against eating meat as long as it's done as responsibly as possible. I _DO_ have something against people who are so out of touch with reality that they think their food materializes out of thin air. Even vegan food is grown in a way that results in the deaths of bazillions of voles and shrews and mice and gophers.

People should have at least enough respect for animals to be willing to acknowledge how they live and die.

I adopted a cruelty-free lifestyle because of my own personal morality, I wasn't motivated by sensationalized depictions of animal brutality.

@Science and the City - the campaign and programmes by Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are firmly focused not only making comment - but bringing about real change. They have huge mainstream influence which, as Monica1 says, they have used to bring the consumer up against how our choice of product influences the world of farming. It is an ongoing challenge which sometimes backfires.

The UK supermarkets (primarily, but not only, Tesco) have long had a practice of using poultry as a loss leader – and selling chicken at the “obscenely” low price of GBP5 for two. No surprise that the programmes make it personal in showing just why the price is obscene. Tesco’s response was to lower the price to GBP1.99 each.

It will be interesting to see how the campaign fares in the economic downturn (initially sales of cheap chickens increased as much as those of free-range as it publicised how cheap they were). In the upscale supermarkets (Waitrose/M&S) non-free-range languish on the shelves, but they seem as popular as ever in the budget conscious shops.

For myself, I'm ashamed to say I'd always assumed factory farming was even worse and I was surprised at how un-free-range some free-range chicken is… but I think it is always good to be reminded that we pay butchers conscience money and how ridiculous it was of me to make a moral stand about eggs and ignore the pitifully dire existence of the birds. For the record, they’ve converted me, good and proper.

It's funny. I can remember a tv program from when I was a little kid that demonstrated the factory farming of chickens for animal food. This had to have been in the late 70's or early 80's.

It was a very dramatized program. I remember baby chicks being dumped into a giant chamber and then being pressed down--essentially crushed alive to extract them into feed. At the end of a scene, one little chick that fell out of the chamber was seen waddling away.

It was brutal then and it is brutal now--as Oliver has demonstrated. I don't know how else to say this--I typically don't use crude words when I blog (more so in regular conversation) but he's got balls. He is really commited to his mission and he's not backing down.

Go Jamie.

(And I had to peek through my fingers to see the chicks die.)

here are Jamie's views of chickens and eggs

http://www.bhwt.org.uk/patrons.php

What really brought home this issue was when Jamie's friend Jimmy Doherty received his rescued battery hens on an episode of "Jimmy's Farm"...

They were the saddest, most pathetic hens you could imagine -- because of their living conditions and the food they were receiving, they had lost their feathers... Jimmy brought them back, and they resumed laying...

Here are some pictures of the hens Jimmy got, and a bit of their story:

http://www.justhungry.com/2006/03/the_choices_we_.html

Paanta -- the farm does in fact kill the chickens. But I'm not eating them, I'm eating the eggs. I have no objection to anyone else eating meat if they choose to -- the other members of my family eat meat, and that is fine with me. I'm not going to judge someone else's decision. My only point initially was that, in my opinion, killing baby chicks on a video seems like a cruel way to make the point that killing chickens is cruel. I mentioned the farm eggs only when I responded to Nicholas who seemed to suggest that one could not object to this video unless one eats no chicken or eggs.

I would not criticize someone else for choosing to eat meat. What I don't like is when non-vegetarians feel as though they must attack all vegetarians, even those who are not out to judge them. I have seen a lot of this out there lately -- either saying that a vegetarian diet is not healthy, or that humans need animal protein, or that we are hurting farmers by choosing not to eat meat. I don't judge people for eating meat, and I would like not to be judged for not eating it.

Susmita, I think what Jamie is demonstrating is what happens with egg farming, not chicken farming. The chickens raised for meat are a different breed from the chickens raised for laying eggs. For the egg-laying chickens, the males aren't useful, so the cost-efficient thing to do is to kill and dispose of them, often in the way Jamie is demonstrating. That's the whole point behind the separating the male and female chicks. It's an actual job called chick sexer.

Exactly Susmita -- in my own personal experience, a lot of non-vegetarians criticize me for the decisions I make when it comes to eating. In my own opinion, they're so judgmental because they're so insecure about their own diet.

And no matter how you slice it, Jamie Oliver is "crusading" against animal cruelty by facilitating it. So not pukka...

Thanks, mollyjade. As I said, I didn't watch the video, and what you describe is a terrible practice. I am pretty sure the person from whom I get my eggs doesn't do that, because it's a very, very small operation, but it is worth finding out!

And I do understand that there are definitely some vegetarians who are very holier-than-thou, and I am not one of them!! I can understand it must be incredibly annoying if you are eating meat (or eating anything, for that matter) to have someone criticize what you're eating and criticize YOU for eating it.

I agree with hazlenut - "It seems a little counterproductive to perpetuate the brutality you're supposedly protesting."

While people do need reality checks, this was definitly NOT the way to do this. What do you think they did with all those babies they killed.

That was terrible. I AM a vegatraian. I don't care if you eat meat, but at least know where your meat is coming from, and be sure it is humanely treated - free range, non-hormone, etc.

"What do you think they did with all those babies they killed."

While I think he might have been able to show this without actually doing it himself, suffocation is how many male chicks die. I assume he disposed of the chicks the same way way the egg producers do. He either threw them in the garbage or had them made into animal feed (I'd guess the first given his opinions on animal agricultre). I feel gruesome saying all this, but he didn't do anything that's not done behind closed doors every day in the egg industry.

I do not mean to criticize anyone. What I do mean to criticize is the practice of people putting on blinders when it comes to the sources of their food. This seems to occur much less among vegetarians than others (for obvious reasons), but they are not immune. The point of this video, as far as I can tell, is simply that people are forced to remove these blinders.

If you find the activity performed here to be unethical, and you do not eat chicken or eggs, good for you. If the majority of people put as much consideration into the ethics of their diet as you, the food production system would be much better.

And just for the record, I am not a vegetarian, but eat vegetarian meals the majority of the time. The meat that I do eat comes from people that I trust to treat their animals well, in life and death.

(You may note that I'm assuming the video is accurate in it's portrayal that even smaller egg producing operations, which treat their hens well, still have to dispose of chicks somehow. I have no experience raising chickens, so I have no reason to question this assumption. If this practice only occurs at the industrial level, so much the better - and someone please correct me.)

Lastly, there is a difference between displaying animal cruelty and promoting it. As a matter of fact, it seems to me like Jamie is doing the opposite of promoting this type of behavior; by shocking people this way, he is forcing them to see the arguably unethical actions they've always been complicit to.

I feel like this is equivolent to saying "Cannabalism is wrong" and then killing and eating a baby to emphasize the wrong-ness.

There are numerous videos showing what happens to chicks - why couldn't he have shown one of those???

It simply would not have the same impact. The fact that it is so shocking gets it more attention, thus more people see what happens.

I agree that we're getting too far removed from our own food production. Factory farms are no good for our health or the health of the animals we eat.

This year, I've resolved to be more responsible for my family's food intake -- we've been raising our own chicks for a few weeks now. I can't wait until the day I reach into the coop and find an egg.

After reading all the responses to this post, it is surprising how little people know about the choices they make...sure I wasn't keen on the whole process...but I figured that the fate for male chicks was not good.

if everyone is this out of touch with what happens to our food ....I HOPE YOU PEOPLE AT LEAST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR PETS. I HOPE EVERYONE HAS PEEKED INTO THE OPRAH EPISODE EXPOSING PUPPYMILLS...if not done their own pictoral research on puppymills. The eye opener for me on that one was that this is LEGAL!

what i want to know is why are people so shocked that he killed these chicks on air? What do you think was going to be done with them after the show? Are you guys saying that it's perfectly alright to kill chicks, as long as it's not video taped? I am a meat eater and as sad as it is to see little chicks being killed - they're serving a purpose. They're gonna feed our dogs, the animals at the zoos both vegetarians and omnivorous people go to. Nothing is wasted. Just be glad these poor chicks weren't macerated.

One question. Is Jamie Oliver a vegan?

I applaud Jamie Oliver for educating people about where their food comes from. This happens everyday and would have happened to these chicks anyway, so why live in denial? Instead of bringing the camera to those chicks on the farm, he brought the chicks to the diners and made a show of it. Understanding reality can help people make educated choices.

Susmita,

and all those people who think egg production is not cruel,

(after you get past the issue of killing off the male chicks of course),

please check out this link (no, it is not as horrific as Jamie's video, no animals died -- it is in fact a "good news"story):

http://www.justhungry.com/2006/03/the_choices_we_.html

This is what Jamie is campaigning against.

I applaud it. People should know where their food is coming from. I dont eat meat and I refuse to call myself a vegetarian. A lot of vegetarians I know tend to be condescending because they dont think they are eating products that have come about from animals deaths. It jsut shows how little we now about what we put in our bodies.

Im slowly going vegan.

Thanks, monika1. I always appreciate getting more information about what I'm eating -- I think we need to be informed, and then make choices we are comfortable with, and allow others to do the same. Interesting comments overall!!

I actually wrote about this exact video on my blog, 5 Second Rule (http://5secondrule.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/facing-up.html).

My view is that Oliver is shining a bright light on a widespread practice and in so doing is working against that very practice. I don't really understand why someone would assume he's a vegan.

imho, he should be commended for using his celebrity to expose the underside of the chicken industry no matter how hard it is to watch. As a meat-eater, it forced me to confront head-on my own hypocrisy as well.