URGENT: Can you help make life a little easier for a cruelly farmed chicken?

[housepiglet]

Hello peeps,

Over here in the UK, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (from River Cottage etc) is campaigning to improve the lives of cruelly farmed chickens. Millions of chickens subsist and then die in appalling conditions so that large supermarkets like Tesco can offer them for sale for as little as £2 each. He's campaigning to increase the numbers of

Comments

[maddoggirl]

I.hate.him.

And I'm skint. And even if I weren't, I'm really, really heartless ;D

But I do appreciate the fact that you are a compassionate person and so I wish you well. As long as it's not more expensive, I know my mum would much rather buy healthily-raised chickens. It sounds churlish, I know, but money is so tight everywhere at the moment.

[housepiglet]

Why.do.you.hate.him?

Ta for the good wishes for the campaign :) Free-range chickens are more expensive, but one way to reconcile that with tight budgets is simply to eat chicken less often. I think a lot of the problem is that supermarkets have managed to make chicken so cheap that we don't always stop to consider that it's a (formerly) living and sentient creature--just like us, at the end of the day--that we're chucking on the barbecue. (I've never been able to speeeel that word. Should it be a 'q'? Or something else?)

[maddoggirl]

I think it's usually 'q', but I stick to the more cowardly abbreviation :D

Oh, I hate his silly middle-class city-slicker jumper-wearing long-haired preachy ridiculousness. I don't know if it's growing up in the countryside, but I am just so far away from his whole outlook that I find him teeth-grittingly annoying. I mean, to me, animals are just walking pieces of food, and the whole circle-of-life process is pretty fine with me(I guess it's just an attitude you pick up unconsciously from other local people, because I personally don't actually live on a farm or see animals being killed or anything). Don't get me wrong, it would be churlish not to prefer that animals be kept in humane (ha ha) conditions, but I just wouldn't lose any sleep over it if they weren't.

Oh Christ, I'm awful. But I've been raised in a family of animal-disliking carnivores, so I plead mitigating circs :D

[housepiglet]

Oh, I hate his silly middle-class city-slicker jumper-wearing long-haired preachy ridiculousness. I don't know if it's growing up in the countryside, but I am just so far away from his whole outlook that I find him teeth-grittingly annoying.

Ahaaa. Wrong accent, then :) Well, Jamie Oliver supports it too.

I mean, to me, animals are just walking pieces of food, and the whole circle-of-life process is pretty fine with me (I guess it's just an attitude you pick up unconsciously from other local people, because I personally don't actually live on a farm or see animals being killed or anything).In fact, he's very much in favour of the circle-of-life thing. He rears his own animals, takes part in their humane destruction and ensures that their lives haven't been wasted by using the whole animal, rather than just convenient bits and pieces. Part of what he's doing is encouraging people who'd normally buy their eggs and chicken in supermarkets to get together and rear them on land provided by the local authority

[hibernia1]

It's very good that you draw attention to this, Piglet! I'll make a donation to one of the Dutch animal-welfare-charities instead.

[housepiglet]

**(((loves you)))**

I think this often gets lost in all the other good causes. Istm that makes it even more important to remember the wee creatures, though :) &hearts

[hibernia1]

Piglet! Guess what I did? I adopted a ROOSTER. Listen to this: there's an animal-welfare-society here (in Holland) especially for chickens, and you can adopt a chicken that's then allowed to be outside, scratch for food, walk in the grass, sleep with others in a nice large pen, doesn't have it's beak clipped, et cetera, and you get 6 eggs every month. But I don't like eggs all that much and I'd have to go to a specific store on a specific date, and I'm not good with that kind of pressure (I'm weird, but you already knew that), but you can also adopt a rooster, getting nothing in return but a certificate (and you can name him! I'm gonna name mine Greg!) and the satisfaction that there's a couple of chickens happy because they have a real rooster like in normal chicken-life! Normally farmers don't keep roosters with their chickens as they only cost money, but with me (and other people) adopting them, they can keep one! Isn't this nice?? I thought you'd like to know

[empressaurelius]

This is something that means a lot to me too--the way these poor animals are treated is disgusting.

[housepiglet]

*raises trotter in high five*

It is :(