Chicken Out Update

Those of you who read Earth and Tree last year (with their speakers on!) will remember the cacophony of chicken noises which greeted them from the 'Chicken Out' campaign banner we had flying.. this is a campaign in the UK to get the food industry, especially the big supermarkets, to clean up their act on chicken production and welfare and to get consumers to buy free-range rather than intensively-reared birds.

Thought you might like to read this update on how the campaign is going and what is being planned for 2009...



New television programme
Watch out for Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too which is scheduled to air on Channel 4 on Monday 26th January at 9pm. This is a follow-up film to last year’s Hugh’s Chicken Run series and documents what happened when I became a Tesco shareholder as part of my fight to improve chicken welfare.

Poultry welfare forum
The plan to create a Poultry Welfare Forum which represents all the stakeholders - the farming industry, retailers, restaurants, government, campaign groups and consumers - has come to fruition and, late last year, we managed to hold an initial meeting of key players. Six themes were identified for further discussion. They were:

1. Agreeing an acceptable standard for British poultry welfare
2. Providing clear labeling for consumers on chicken standards
3. Ensuring progress on chicken welfare is not thwarted by lower-welfare imports
4. Achieving a better understanding, both within and outside the industry, of different health and welfare standards
5. Exploring dynamics between welfare and other sustainability issues
6. Stopping price wars so that chicken is not sold at less than production cost

I hope to have an updated report on all these issues in Spring 2009.

Compassion in World Farming
Compassion in World Farming is the leading international farm animal welfare charity, with a 40 year track record of successful campaigning on issues such as battery caged hens and veal crates. Their support has already been crucial to the Chicken Out! campaign and I’m delighted to announced that they will help me take it to the next level. CIWF have been appointed by the new Poultry Welfare Forum (see above) to co-ordinate discussion on the issue of transparency and consumer information. They will also be taking over the day-to-day running of the Chicken Out! website, giving links to the latest welfare news and providing some of the educational materials that many of you have asked about. I will still be providing my regular updates and you’ll next be hearing from me again after the airing of Chicken, Hugh and Tesco Too when we have an exciting online challenge we will be launching after the programme!

Please do check out the website over the next couple of months with much more to come, as we take the campaign ever onwards and upwards. Remember, we couldn’t have achieved all that we have so far without your magnificent support, and we still need it!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall