I have been watching Hugh’s Chicken Run on Channel 4 with interest. The programme follows celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as he tries to educate the people in Axminster about the poor treatment of cheap chickens. He particularly highlights special offers that give you two chickens for five pounds, effectively a £2.50 chicken and shows how these chickens are raised and slaughtered within a 30 day period. Personally before I watched the programme I already brought free range chicken, mainly because I find it has more flavour to it. I was however, interested to see that many people shown on the programme did not know where their chickens came from and how they were reared. Judging by the shelves at my local supermarket many people have watched the programme and have been affected by it. The section with two chickens for £5 was completely full of chicken when I visited the store today. In contrast there were no organic or free range chickens to be found at all, the shelf was empty. I also noticed that people buying chicken were carefully reading the labels and in many cases putting the cheap chicken back and walking away without buying it. It’s interesting that a television programme has so much influence. I do wonder, however, whether these new converts to free range chicken will still be buying it six months later.
1 thought on “Cheap Chicken”
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Does the cheap chicken taste any different from the organic or free range chicken? Does it harm the person that consumes it? Because all I read was, "cheaper chicken" which of course means if given a choice I’d still buy the cheap chicken. Am I missing the point of the post? I certainly don’t worry about how the cows were treated when I buy steak… or what my soon-to-be-dinner lobster thought about before it died.