As most of you are no doubt aware, British celebrity chef – Jamie Oliver – has been stirring things up again. And he’s good at it! His documentary series entitled “Jamie’s Fowl Dinners”, which recently aired in the United Kingdom, featured graphic scenes of battery hens being slaughtered. Although the scenes depicting the awful conditions and miserable existence of birds awaiting slaughter would come as no surprise to anyone that’s had anything to do with the commercial poultry industry, apparently many scenes shocked viewers.

According to a recent article published in The Telegraph, sales of organic and free-range chickens have soared following airing of the show. This sudden increase in demand for organic and free-range chooks suggests to me that many consumers are either unaware of, or at least sufficiently divorced from, the realities of modern food production.

Here are some of the realities of commercial chicken meat production:

• Birds are slaughtered after about 40 days.
• Birds are reared in cramped “battery” conditions.
• To ensure birds gain weight they are routinely fed the rendered down fat from livestock discard.
• Routine debeaking, a process involving the removal of part of a bird’s beak, is used to prevent agitated birds from pecking each other to death.
• Disease outbreaks, which are commonplace, are controlled with the routine administration of antibiotics.
• To ensure they are sufficiently large at slaughter, hormonal treatments are applied to the grain and supplemental feed given to developing birds.
• Due to them being caged and unable to roam freely, birds tend to develop abnormally large bodies that are unable to be supported by their underdeveloped legs.

Birds raised according to organic principles experience an entirely different existence. These birds have the capacity to forage for food on farms rather than being caged and force-fed in factory sheds. Unlike battery-farmed chickens, which often receive protein and fat supplements in the form of rendered down livestock discard, organic birds have the opportunity to supplement their grain diet with worms and other insects. Organically reared birds are treated humanely throughout their lives and are not permitted to receive either antibiotic or hormone treatments.

More often than not, efficiency gains come at a cost. Whether it’s food quality, safety, hygiene or animal welfare, something generally has to give. While these additional costs might not be immediately evident, they are real and they have the capacity to catch up with us. Just ask anyone with a family member or friend that was exposed to BSE during the 1990s! In our never-ending quest to squeeze more out of less, we’ve reduced food production standards to an accounting number. Unit cost – an accounting concept – has become the surrogate barometer with which we gauge the acceptability or otherwise of our food production standards. Clearly, this needs to change!

Many consumers are choosing to put an organic turkey on their tables this festive season. There are some good reasons for them choosing to do so. For a start, organic turkeys are raised more humanely than their conventionally reared cousins. Instead of being force fed in cramped conditions utilising an intricate system of tubes and intravenous delivery mechanisms to provide sustenance, organically certified birds have access to open spaces. This enables organic birds to forage for natural sources of food such as worms, bugs and insects.

When organic turkeys are fed grain to supplement their natural diet, the grain itself must be from certified organic sources. In contrast, conventional turkeys are fed conventional grain. Conventional grain, which tends to be cheaper than organically certified grain, is sprayed with industrial agricultural chemicals (pesticides, herbicides and fungicides) and grown in soil requiring significant quantities of synthetic chemicals (chemical fertilizers). Many pesticides in particular, once consumed, are stored in mammalian muscle, fat, and organ tissue. Consuming conventionally reared protein sources provides our bodies with a concentrated intake of industrial agricultural chemicals.

Because conventionally reared birds live in cramped conditions, disease outbreaks tend to spread fast among the immunosuppressed birds. To arrest disease before it takes hold, antibiotics are routinely administered to conventional turkeys. In contrast, organic birds must not be given preventative antibiotic treatments. Fortunately, due to their superior diet and the natural conditions the birds enjoy, organic turkeys tend to be less stressed, better nourished, and relatively disease free. Consequently, there is no need for organic farmers to constantly rely upon preventative antibiotic treatments. The increased prevalence of preventative antibiotics in our food chain is sought by many medical professionals to be responsible for a rise in both the quantum and severity of antibiotic resistant outbreaks within our hospitals in recent years. 

While it’s great to see consumers getting behind the dedicated – generally small scale – farmers responsible for bringing organic turkeys to our tables at this time of year, the bird flu crisis, which appears to be worsening in the UK, has taken its toll on organic farmers in East Anglia. The Daily Mirror reports that Waitrose, a major UK department store, will be left without any organic turkeys this year. Apparently, Waitrose’s supply of organic turkey was to be sourced exclusively from East Anglia. Although reports indicate that other major retailers shouldn’t be impacted, it might pay to pick up that organic turkey soon.

Speaking of picking up an organic turkey, you might like to consider sourcing your turkey from one of the following:

Australia: Sunforest Organic Farm

Canada: Organa Farms

England: Woodlands Organic Farm

Ireland: James Whelan Butchers

Scotland: Jamesfield Farms

United States: Diestel Turkey Ranch

Wales: S & J Organics