Chicken Out!
Chicken Out! is an interesting campaign that aims to raise the awareness of the plight of battery chickens.
The whole industry of breeding chickens for food is quite despicable at the lower end of the market, and all because consumers want a 99p chicken sandwich from the big fast food chains such as McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The supermarkets too are implicated in this crime of breeding chickens in awful conditions. They can offer a whole bird for just £3 and still make profits of billions whilst British farmers struggle.
The big corporates use their collective buying power to drive down prices, creating a market place where the value of a life is worth only half an hour's work at the minimum wage. In order to supply these cheap birds, battery farmers keep the birds indoors for all their life, and the birds end up with a very sad existence. The chickens have little room to roam freely and gain weight rapidly in an intense life that sees them live for just 39 days!
The Chicken Out! campaign aims to see birds bred in much better conditions, to give farmers a better deal for the animals they rear and to raise food standards. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, of River Cottage fame, and Compassion in World Farming are behind the campaign saying that the conditions in which these chickens are raised is unacceptable and that the industry should be "de-intensified".
We quite agree. If we allow our animals to be treated this way, if we think that factory farming is OK, if we believe that supermarkets should continue to grow and make huge profit at the expense of our vanishing small shops then we still have a lot to learn.
If you believe in higher welfare standards, if you think the industry should be reformed, if you think before you eat then visit Chicken Out! and sign up to their campaign after all a big part of going green means you should know what you're eating and care where it came from.