Factory chicken farming is about to get a roasting. If Jamie Oliver gets his way, the cheapest chicken will go the way of the Turkey Twizzler after his school dinners campaign. In a new one-off programme on Channel 4, Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, the chef champions the cause of chickens.

He will expose the reasons why the meat we eat more than any other costs so little and will show why we should all buy higher-welfare birds. “A chicken should never cost £3. I want the public to see the truth and I think they’ll make the right choices,” he says, talking exclusively to Body&Soul about his campaign.

When Asda knocked the price off a whole bird down to £2 last summer, the poor chicken’s value hit an all-time low. “This is screwing down prices on live animals,” Oliver says. “The supermarket price wars are to the detriment of the animals and the farmer.” He’s afraid that if we continue to insist on cheap chicken, Britain’s poultry industry will die a death as swift and ugly as that of the 16 million five-week-old broilers killed every week to be sold for the price of a pint.

Chickens are woodland creatures that like to scratch and roam outside, as well as to perch, play and shelter indoors. Yet free-range and organic chickens, which have grown up with grass underfoot, are a privileged minority – 95 per cent of Britain’s birds are fattened quickly in huge, overcrowded, windowless sheds. They’re a fast-growing breed, which reaches the right size for slaughter twice as quickly as factory-farmed chickens 30 years ago. “Many people call this the Frankenstein chicken,” Oliver says.

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BACKGROUND

• Good food trail: Wales

• Giles Coren's Top 10 reviews for 2007

• Food festivals 2008

Related Links

• Humane Hugh wants you to give up cheap chicken

• Supermarkets sell old chicken as ‘fresh’

• Jamie Oliver’s grilled mushroom risotto made with fresh chicken stock

There is nothing for chickens to do but eat
Oliver believes that farmers are victims, too. “I have not met a farmer who is happy earning 3p a bird and wading through chickens.” At best it’s depressing to see 40,000 fluffy chicks in a dimly-lit hangar. Even well-cared-for chickens grow too quickly and the stocking densities – the number allocated to a given space – are too high, say animal welfare groups. At worst, as they grow and become crammed together, “they die or get hock burn”, Oliver confirms. Hock burn is the term for ulcers on the legs caused by the birds living in their waste. The birds’ weight gain is ensured by restricting the “nighttime” to four hours, allowing them more time to eat. There’s nothing else for them to do.

While most intensively reared chicken comes with the Red Tractor symbol to show that they are British and conform to Assured Chicken Production (ACP) standards, the labels meet less than half Compassion in World Farming’s 13 animal welfare criteria. The RSPCA doesn’t think it’s good enough either. “The welfare element in ACP is pretty low,” says Dr Marc Cooper, the senior scientific officer of the RSPCA. Freedom Food is the charity’s label given to animals reared to its higher welfare standards. Freedom Food chickens aren’t necessarily free range, but they must have more space, places to perch, better lighting and longer nights. Most importantly they must be slower-growing breeds, able to live at least a fortnight longer.

These higher-welfare birds get Oliver’s vote. “A slower-growing breed will sort out many problems. I think they’ve also got to have natural light and things to do. I could have said that everyone should go for free range or organic, but I don’t want to come across as elitist. These higher-welfare birds are about £3.95 and that’s about as good value as you can get. It’s an extra 99p. That’s less than half a pint of Stella.

“My ambition is to change the 95 per cent of Britain eating standard chicken; to get them to step up to a better-welfare bird. I would say to everyone: Buy British and buy the best welfare bird you can afford.” Better still, for twice the price of a dirt-cheap chook, a slower-grown free-range bird should taste vastly superior. Organic chickens are free range, too, and ought to be the happiest. Organic chickens start at about £8, though the poshest birds, bought direct from the farm can be as much as £15. But as Oliver says: “If something has lived three times as long and had three times the feed, you’d expect it to cost three times as much.”

All organic birds live for at least 11 weeks. That’s the age chickens used to be and, in the days when the meat was a tasty treat, thrifty households could conjure up several meals from one fowl. Oliver would like us to revive this practice. “You can get three meals out of a 1.5kg (3lb) bird. After a roast, you could have a curry out of it on the second day. And you can make a bloody good risotto (see left) with the stock.”

NB To make the stock, add about 1.5l of hot water to a pan containing the chicken carcass, chopped onions, root veg and a bay leaf. Cover and simmer on low heat for three hours. Sieve out the juice and store the stock in an airtight container in the fridge for two days or freeze.

Jamie’s Fowl Dinners is on Channel 4, January 11, 9pm

Take three chickens . . . for £3, £6 and £12

I visited intensive, free-range and organic farms to compare the lifestyles of the chickens, then roasted and made stock with one of each for a blind tasting.

£3 – Asda Small Whole British Chicken, £2.91 for 1.35kg, or two for £5

Life: Intensively-reared chickens sold for this price are slaughtered after only 35 days, by which time there could be up to 19 of them for each square metre. This chicken is a Cobb (pictured below), the fastest-growing breed. Asda did not find it convenient to arrange a visit to any of the farms that supply its cheapest chickens, although I did visit another supermarket’s supplier.

Taste: An unpleasantly pale bird with a soft, flannely texture and little flavour. Colourless juice, lots of grease and the fat had a faintly sour tang. Nobody favoured this one. The bones produced a wan and useless stock.

Other £3 chickens: Don’t buy. Spend a little more on a Freedom Food or slower-grown chicken, if not a free-range bird.

£6 – Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference West Country Free Range, £5.99 for 1.5kg bird

Life: The birds are the slower-growing Devonshire Red breed, kept 5,000 to a shed with easy access to a grassy field sheltered by trees. They live for 56 days, up to a dozen chickens per square metre. If all the chickens went outside at once, they’d still have a square metre each. On the free-range farm I visited, a cockerel crowed on a straw bale, chickens perched indoors, scampered outside or huddled cosily together even when they could have spread themselves out in the barn.

Taste: We could taste the difference in the dark meat. The children liked this chicken most for being neither too drab nor too gamey, tender but not flabby. Enough for a couple of family meals, with a respectable stock as the basis of a third. A good all-round crowd pleaser.

Other £6 chickens: Marks & Spencer Oakham free-range small; Coop Truly Irresistible free-range; Asda Extra Special free-range corn-fed, 2kg.

£12 – Higher Hacknell Farm Organic, £12.70 for a 2.05kg chicken. From www.higherhacknell.co.uk 01769 560909 and some Devon farmers’ markets

Life: This is a Taste of the West Award-winning organic chicken from one of the Soil Association’s champion producers in Devon. These birds are reared in groups of fewer than 300 and can easily exercise their right to roam outside. The sheds, with bales and perches, are moved around the mixed, organic family farm. After 13 weeks the chickens are caught by the farmer and taken to the abattoir only 15 miles away.

Taste: Though the white meat was bountiful, it was firmer than some members of the family were used to – this is the result of the chickens having a long, full life. The dark meat was incomparably good. The skin and golden fat underneath were sweet and gorgeous. Tawny juices left in the pan provided instant, tasty gravy. With an organic chicken liver thrown in, there’s more than enough meat to keep a family going for two meals, and the nourishing and golden stock was almost a soup in itself.

Other £12 plus chickens: Sheepdrove Farm organic (www.sheepdrove.com); Label Anglais free-range (www.sjfrederick.co.uk); Real Meat Co (www.realmeat.co.uk); Waitrose British Poulet D’Or.

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