Jamie’s Fowl Dinners: What are your thoughts?
Filed under: News, TV Shows | By: Lucy
Posted on: January 11, 2008 | 22 Comments
Jamie Oliver’s latest campaign is to ensure that the people of Britain know where their eggs and meat come from. Oliver is investigating the life and death of cheaply sold chicken – not only that, but it’s all in front of an audience.
In the programme, Jamie goes through the motions as he shows just exactly what happens to a male chick in the egg industry and what happens to a battery hen once her egg-laying days are over.
The show started out with a huge shock – Jamie asks the audience to separate male and female chicks. Once he’s got the male chicks, he then gassed them to highlight the fact that these chicks, in the eyes of the egg industry, are worthless. Their death wasn’t for nothing though, as the male chicks were then fed to a snake!
The scene where the chicks were gassed really got to me. I did burst into tears and I wouldn’t call myself a sensitive person. As the programme went on I found myself really upset by how chickens are treated in this country. It has definitely changed my mind on battery eggs and cheap chicken - it’s free range all the way for me now.
I feel Jamie’s show isn’t necessarily revolutionary, I don’t think he has set out to do something ‘sensational’ by the show, he just wants to open people’s eyes to the fact that this is where cheap chicken and eggs come from.
To be honest, is it really too much to ask to pay a few extra pennies for free range eggs and a pound more to make sure you’ve bought a free range chicken? If we all show our support, the supermarkets will have no choice but to take battery hens and eggs off the shelves.
Did you watch the show? What did you make of it? Has the show changed your attitude to free range chicken and eggs?
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I watched the programme and will continue to buy free range chicken, as I have done for about 5 years. The programme did bring home to me that there are many products that contain battery farmed eggs and I will now also be selecting these a good deal more carefully. Those people who say that they cannot afford a free range bird are simply making excuses for their behaviour. Buy one fewer ready meal / pint etc and it will be easily affordable. Stop justifying your actions in such a predictable way.
I felt I had a responsibility to watch it as a meat eater. I was shocked at the slop we so easily forget we are eating!
Im not sure the slaughter of the chicken live on telly really had a purpose other than shock value…:S
BUT one thing I must say…the programme was informative. I never new about the urine burning on the feet.
I have definately changed my buying habits! I bought a west country corn fed bird that had the freedom marker on the packaging, I am on an extremely tight budget but I WILL pay the difference, its all about priorities, and I feel its important, so Im happy to pay it.