Okay, so battery hens have short lives (often only about 42 days) and their conditions are a bit miserable but they have a good conversion rate i.e the proportion of feed they eat to the meat they produce. This means that chicken is cheap to buy and in plentiful supply.
It means that families can eat healthily even on the lowest budget. It means that we don't need to feed our children on cholesterol filled meat, burgers and junk food because we can provide a healthy diet for them. When we are talking about the welfare of people and the welfare of chickens there is really no contest!
The idea that we should all eat free range chicken is a nonsense. It would take an area the size of the Lake District to be devoted to chicken farming and nothing else! Free-range chicken campaigners should face facts - it just wouldn't work! ( Unless everyone cares to rear chickens in their back gardens!)We need battery farming to feed the nation. No one would want to go back to the old days when the only time you could afford a chicken was at Christmas, if you were lucky.
The same applies to eggs. We need to produce eggs by battery hens if everyone is to be able to afford them and if they are to continue in plentiful supply. Nutitionally, battery-raised eggs aren't much different to free range or organically produced eggs.
So I would say to the "fluffy bunny" brigade who love to be so sentimental about animals that low cost meat is necessary. We farmers have to face facts. We can't afford to be sentimental about the animals we rear or you would all starve!! Farming is a business like any other. The days of having a few hens scratching round a farmyard are long gone.
Face facts, we are running out of fish so we need fish farming, we haven't enough room for free range hens so we need battery farming. Fish, hens and eggs are good, healthy staple food.
Some of the celebrity chefs, such as Jamie Oliver try their best to tell us that organic free range chicken actually tastes better.
Well, here is a recipe we have at home a lot. Try it with a battery chicken - one of Tesco's special offer cheapest - and try it with a really expensive free range organic chicken and you won't be able to tell the difference.
Curried Chicken and Rice
30grams( 1 oz )butter, 4 chicken breasts boned and cut into strips, pinch of salt, ground black pepper, 2 chopped onions, 2 crushed cloves of garlic , 85g (3oz) mild curry paste, 225g (8oz) long grain rice, 3/4 pint chicken stock, 400g can of chopped tomatoes, 340g (12oz) cauliflower florets, 60g (2oz) raisins, 115g (4 oz) frozen peas, 1/4 pint( 150ml )natural yogurt
First you melt the butter in a large flameproof casserole and cook the chicken in it over a moderate heat for about 5 minutes and move them to a plate and season them.
Next , fry the onions and garlic in the casserole until softened. Add the curry paste, rice, stock, tomatoes, cauliflower and raisins and slowly heat until it boils. Then reduce the heat. Cover the casserole and simmer for 15 minutes. You will need to stir it now and again.
Put the chicken back in the casserole, stir in the peas and put the lid on. Bring back to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the rice is cooked and the liquid has been absorbed. remove from the heat, stir in the yogurt and serve.
You can find more chicken recipes a forum called The Catering Forum . This is a forum for anyone interested in food and cooking and they share all kinds of hints and recipes.
If you are trying to save money on the housekeeping or have very little in the store cupboard try a website called "Not Beans Again" where you just key in your ingredients and they produce a recipe for you.
So, have I changed your mind? What do YOU think?
If you are trying to save money on the housekeeping or have very little in the store cupboard try a website called "Not Beans Again" where you just key in your ingredients and they produce a recipe for you.
So, have I changed your mind? What do YOU think?
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14 comments:
I don't exactly agree with your views on battery farming, I'd rather pay a little more for my chicken knowing that the chicken had a breath of fresh air. But thank you for posting the chicken curry recipe, I'll certainly give that a try, using Free Range chicken of course :)
"So I would say to the "fluffy bunny" brigade who love to be so sentimental about animals that low cost meat is necessary."
I happen to be one of the "fluffy bunny" brigade, and I like and respect animals.
There should be wider reporting of the utter horror that chickens face in some battery farms. Regularily put the horrific images into people's faces, and hopefully prick their consciences. Currently, it's all to easy to buy a lump of chicken from a supermarket and have no consideration for the suffering and misery that an animal has endured to feed your stomach.
I'm a non-meat eater, and I can assure you that it is easy to live a healthy lifestyle without eating meat. If there were a sea change in people's attitudes to eating meat, less animals would suffer. Animals have feelings too.
Curry powder has tradionally been used to camouflage rotten meat in india where it soon goes off, so it would have no difficulty in disguising the flavour of battery farmed chicken.
People don't need to feed their children on burgers & convenience foods but they will because they are lazy & don't know how to cook, cheap chicken won't change their habits.
Vegetarian for over 20 years & still healthy.
i hate to state the obvious to your ignorance but free range chicken is not over priced. secondly the fact you clearly have no problem with the cruelty battery farming conflicts on the chicken just sums up your mentality i guess. the fact that you are a farmer is even more disgusting. i hope this "bunny brigade" eventually ruins any of your chances at making battery farming a norm, idiot :)
How about children? Do they have to be vegetarians, too? The problem is that they tend not to like vegetables and so it is difficult to provide healthy vegetarian meals and ensure they have enough protein, iron etc.I know there are other meats but how are these produced?
How about children? Do they have to be vegetarians, too? The problem is that they tend not to like vegetables
Not true, one of my Granddaughters prefers to eat raw veg & fruit & has to be coaxed to eat fish or meat, and no I have not influenced her I am the only vegetarian in my family. If they only like meat ensure it is good quality meat not farmed in dirty, cruel conditions.
I don't think the author of this article said they themselves were chicken farmers. They were just making us look at reality.
Also vegetarians are in the minority. Most of us eat meat. We just don't like to know where it comes from and how it gets here. But someone has to get it to our plates.
Regarding the fact that they eat curry in India to disguise rotten meat, that is not really relevant. The meat we are talking about is not rotten.
Chicken Tikka Marsala is one of the country's favourite meals! You could just make a nice stir-fry with chicken along with, say garlic and vegetables and maybe add noodles, or you could marinate it in oil and lemon and garlic, or you could simply roast it with a little rosemary. However you do it, it will taste nice.
Incidently, you have to add lots of garlic and spices and flavourings to vegetarian dishes or they taste really bland. The ready-made kind usually contains lots and lots of salt which is very bad for you.
Vegetable loving children are in the minority. Most people are not vegetarians. They like to eat meat and just not want to know how it gets here.
Battery farming is not just cruel,it`s barbaric!
Would you like to live for 40 days cooped up in a artifically lit stinking filth ridden hole?
I would rather pay more money for free range humanely farmed food and do.
If battery farming was banned(which would be a good thing)Then the price of free range food would be pushed down due to price wars with the bigger supermarket chains.More importantly everyone would have no choice but to eat free range humanely farmed food.
If I am one of the fluffy bunny brigade,then good! as I love and respect animals.
As the poster said you would need an area the size of the Lake District for free range chicken farming. The WHOLE area devoted just to chickens and NOTHING else. So the idea of free range chickens for all is just not practical. You would have to find another meat or fish source to compensate.
Sheep farming, pig farming , cattle farming all take up too much land to be a substitute and farming the likes of salmon is just as cruel as chicken farming
My guess is that if you banned it in this country then the big companies who make frozen and ready meals, tinned soup, packets of chicken slices for sandwiches, chicken pate, stock cubes etc. would just import it from overseas.
That would increase the carbon footprint and the people who would miss out would be the British farmers and the people who couldn't afford the free range chicken.
like the article says, farming is a business. At the end of the day, the farmer has to keep his/her profit up in order to earn a chicken. It's a cruel world we live in but that's just the way it is.
Battery chickens or free range chickens ?
Having seen both farmed I would say there is not much difference and I would rather not pay extra money to make myself feel all warm and cuddly inside when, after all my intention is to eat it's dead body in the first place.
It is a cruel world we live in and if you need a flag to fly there are plenty which deal with human suffering.
Non- meat eaters - you are missing the delights of eating food that used to have a face
Hmmm, as I've just posted something about food and health I find this discussion fascinating. The human race can be a selfish thing and would happily let another life live in squalor, until she was thrown into a lorry where her bones often snap then off to be slaughtered, quite often still concious due to stunning methods being useless. All so this poor life can be eaten and ingested into the human being where the flesh begins to decompose before it can be excreted. There is research connecting flesh consumption and bowel cancer due to the fact our intestines are not those of a carnivores' which are much shorter and therefore it begins to rot inside of us. Seems like the veggies are the sensible ones here.... live healthy and let other lives live in peace too...
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