(no subject)
I feel a rant coming on.
Food is getting more expensive. There's no question of that. Even in the last couple of months, everything I eat has gone up by 10 or 20 pence. Fruit and veg, meat, dairy, everything. Come to think of it, my fuel bills are taking an even more dramatic upturn, £20 on the gas card doesn't last nearly as long as it did last winter.
The practical upshot of all this is that now is probably not the best time for the likes of Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver to start campaigning against cheap chicken.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the conditions cheap hens are raised in are shocking and barbaric. I don't want to put anyone off their dinner here, so I won't dwell, but it's only slightly better than battery egg farming.
The thing is, while Hugh has very moderately said "the middle class could think about picking up a free-range chicken for £7 rather than a broiler for £2.50", the foodie community has taken this to mean "ban cheap chicken for everyone!"
More moderate voices go "what about the people who can't afford £7 a bird, but can afford £2.50?"
"Oh, don't be stupid," say a small but vocal subsection the foodies. "Nobody is really that poor."
Er, what? I can't be the only person who knows families and individuals (often the elderly) who are scared to turn on their heating. People who have to make the zero-sum choices between heating and eating. There is a freakin' world of difference between £7 and £2.50 if you've got a tenner's food budget.
Another subsection of the foodies has a different viewpoint. "Well, the poor shouldn't be eating chicken, anyway! It's not meant to be a staple, it's a treat."
"It's the cheapest meat out there," say the moderates, who presumably don't count economy sausages as meat. That's okay, neither do I.
"Then the poor shouldn't be able to eat meat. They should be eating beans and pulses instead."
Stop right there. Apparently, if you have an interest in food, you either get to ignore the existence of anyone poorer than you, or you get to condemn them to the kind of pottage not seen since the Industrial Revolution. We're not talking Bulugia caviar here, people just want to be able to put something roasted on their table .
I've come to two conclusions here:
1) It's apparently mutually exclusive to care about the welfare of chickens AND care about the welfare of your fellow humans.
2) Despite what the chatter suggests, there is actually an alternative to "let them eat pulses!"
It's beef and pork.
No, no, bear with me. A quick gander at the supermarket shelves shows that we use sod all of any given animal. There's more to a cow than the steak, there's more to a pig than the chops. Where's the brisket, where's the skirt, and where, when you get right down to it, is the offal?
There is a wealth of cheaper cuts and organs that we could be eating, rather than broiler chickens, but it's simply not sold. And that, I suspect, is because most of us don't know they exist, much less how to prepare and cook them.
Someone teach us how to cook this stuff, please! Hell, teach us how to make soup out of a chicken carcass, teach us how to get every scrap of every bit of meat that comes our way. If the likes of Hugh and Jamie want to us to lay off the hideously abused chicken, offer us an alternative that doesn't cost nearly three times the price. Let those of us who can afford to switch to organic chicken give that a try (and I'm going to this week) and run a series on the joys of liver and chump.
Hugh, get back on your offal kick, Jamie, get started. We've got a lot of cooking to teach, and those chickens aren't getting any happier.
For those who want to see the debate first hand, here's the thread on the BBC food boards.
Food is getting more expensive. There's no question of that. Even in the last couple of months, everything I eat has gone up by 10 or 20 pence. Fruit and veg, meat, dairy, everything. Come to think of it, my fuel bills are taking an even more dramatic upturn, £20 on the gas card doesn't last nearly as long as it did last winter.
The practical upshot of all this is that now is probably not the best time for the likes of Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver to start campaigning against cheap chicken.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the conditions cheap hens are raised in are shocking and barbaric. I don't want to put anyone off their dinner here, so I won't dwell, but it's only slightly better than battery egg farming.
The thing is, while Hugh has very moderately said "the middle class could think about picking up a free-range chicken for £7 rather than a broiler for £2.50", the foodie community has taken this to mean "ban cheap chicken for everyone!"
More moderate voices go "what about the people who can't afford £7 a bird, but can afford £2.50?"
"Oh, don't be stupid," say a small but vocal subsection the foodies. "Nobody is really that poor."
Er, what? I can't be the only person who knows families and individuals (often the elderly) who are scared to turn on their heating. People who have to make the zero-sum choices between heating and eating. There is a freakin' world of difference between £7 and £2.50 if you've got a tenner's food budget.
Another subsection of the foodies has a different viewpoint. "Well, the poor shouldn't be eating chicken, anyway! It's not meant to be a staple, it's a treat."
"It's the cheapest meat out there," say the moderates, who presumably don't count economy sausages as meat. That's okay, neither do I.
"Then the poor shouldn't be able to eat meat. They should be eating beans and pulses instead."
Stop right there. Apparently, if you have an interest in food, you either get to ignore the existence of anyone poorer than you, or you get to condemn them to the kind of pottage not seen since the Industrial Revolution. We're not talking Bulugia caviar here, people just want to be able to put something roasted on their table .
I've come to two conclusions here:
1) It's apparently mutually exclusive to care about the welfare of chickens AND care about the welfare of your fellow humans.
2) Despite what the chatter suggests, there is actually an alternative to "let them eat pulses!"
It's beef and pork.
No, no, bear with me. A quick gander at the supermarket shelves shows that we use sod all of any given animal. There's more to a cow than the steak, there's more to a pig than the chops. Where's the brisket, where's the skirt, and where, when you get right down to it, is the offal?
There is a wealth of cheaper cuts and organs that we could be eating, rather than broiler chickens, but it's simply not sold. And that, I suspect, is because most of us don't know they exist, much less how to prepare and cook them.
Someone teach us how to cook this stuff, please! Hell, teach us how to make soup out of a chicken carcass, teach us how to get every scrap of every bit of meat that comes our way. If the likes of Hugh and Jamie want to us to lay off the hideously abused chicken, offer us an alternative that doesn't cost nearly three times the price. Let those of us who can afford to switch to organic chicken give that a try (and I'm going to this week) and run a series on the joys of liver and chump.
Hugh, get back on your offal kick, Jamie, get started. We've got a lot of cooking to teach, and those chickens aren't getting any happier.
For those who want to see the debate first hand, here's the thread on the BBC food boards.