Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Hugh's Chicken Run

1st programme of 3 aired last night on Channel 4 at 9. 2nd and 3rd parts are on tonight and tomorrow. It's all part of the Channel 4 Food Fight series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver and whatever about the other programmes Hugh's Chicken Run is riveting and a very well-made piece of television.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (of River Cottage fame) tries to make his local town the first free-range chicken town in the UK using a variety of methods. He gets some locals on an estate to raise chickens (for eggs and meat) on the local allotments, he tries to get local businesses to use free-range chicken in their canteens, tries (so far unsucessfully) to get supermarkets to engage in discussion about stopping stocking non-free range chickens and finally, he decides, as no factory farms will allow him access, to set up his own intensive operation, one half fully intensive, one half free range so that people can see what it's really like. It sounds like it was hard for him to decide to go ahead with it and it looks like he certainly struggles with raising chickens intensively but, as he said at the beginning of the programme, if it takes the sacrifice of these chickens to save many, many more, maybe it'll be worth it.

Discussion on the programme here and probably on many other forums as well.

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