On a bright, cold morning last autumn, Jamie Oliver arrived at a farm near the Blackdown hills in Devon. There he was led into a dimly lit shed containing more than 13,000 chickens destined for supermarket shelves.

Inside was the intensive production line of one of the staples of modern Britain – the £2.50 table chicken. Thousands of chickens genetically designed to grow into full-size birds in just five weeks were huddled together. There were no windows or places to perch or bales of hay to peck.

The chickens, produced at a nearby hatchery, would be fed intensively until they reached slaughter weight. Each day workers would remove the birds that did not survive.

Oliver emerged into the glare of daylight shocked by what he had seen. It was, he later said, “morally wrong” that animals were being treated in this way.

Expert View

I can remember a time when using herbs was considered adventurous in Irish cooking

Darina Allen

• More

• Post a comment

Related Internet Links

• Real Food Directory

• Organic Box Finder

Seasonal Food: January

Because seasonal food is fresher it tends to be tastier and more nutritious. Find recipes from Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and others

• Shades of green food

• Midwinter greens

Related Links

• Jamie’s ruffling feathers again

• Planet Chicken by Hattie Ellis

• The real cost of good food

On Friday the footage at the farm will be used to spearhead Oliver’s latest crusade – a drive to improve the welfare of the 860m chickens reared in this country every year. Oliver, who has already tackled the government over school dinners, will appeal to the country to buy happier chickens.

“If you’re used to buying a nonfree range chicken, trade up £1 or so to an animal with better living conditions, like natural light and stuff to do,” he said last week. “It’s morally better for the animal and morally better for the producers.”

The RSPCA last week weighed into the debate with advertisements to coincide with Oliver’s campaign, which is one of a series of food programmes on Channel 4, including an experiment by the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whitting-stall comparing different ways of farming chickens.

Oliver and the RSPCA want to see chickens given more space to roam and the use of slower-growing breeds. Even those who draw up the basic standards for most of the country’s chickens agree that welfare standards can and should be improved.

Oliver hopes that this week’s campaign might be the catalyst for an upheaval in the market similar to that already seen in egg production, where the use of hens kept in conventional cages is being phased out. Can his charm prevail over our liking for such cheap meat?

THE Ross 308 is the brand name of one of the most commonly eaten chickens in Britain; it is testimony to the genetic ingenuity of the industry. The Ross 308 “model”, developed for rapid growth, comes with its own 24-page instruction manual and is one of the fastest-growing animals on the planet.

According to the manual, it will hatch at under two ounces, but will double its bodyweight in less than three days. It will have doubled in size again by the end of the week and within a fortnight it will have doubled again, weighing in at just over a pound.

Compared with the chickens that roamed the farmyards in previous generations, or even the slower-growing birds used today on free range and organic farms, it is a veritable colossus. It will reach a suitable kill weight of 4lb within five weeks, about double the growth rate of a chicken in the 1950s.

Such birds are also engineered to supply the British love of chicken breast. Creators of the Cobb 500 - a rival model to the Ross 308 - boast that it has increased breast yield from each carcass from 14% in 1987 to 20% today. But campaigners for animal welfare say that such accelerated growth rates put an intolerable strain on chickens.

“Their hearts and bones are still immature,” said Marc Cooper, senior scientific officer for the RSPCA’s farm animal department. He added that many of the birds – known as broilers in the industry - die from heart failure or suffer lameness.

A government-funded Bristol University study published in 2006 found that more than a quarter of chickens in commercial flocks had moderate or severe leg disorders that impaired their ability to move. It means that more than 200m chickens a year suffer from lameness and in the worst cases can barely move at all to get to water and feed.

“The consumer isn’t aware of what’s going on,” said Rowan West-Henzell, food policy manager at Compassion in World Farming.

“People have been told that chicken is a cheap and healthy option, but not about the reality of production.”

Oliver hopes that his programme, Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, will persuade consumers to change their habits. “I think if even a small percentage of people watching were informed and decided to shop differently as a result, then that would make a real difference,” he said last week.

“If the industry is keeping everything behind closed doors, it’s my duty to take the information to the public to let them make their own choices.”

At present, most broiler producers abide by the rules set by an organisation called Assured Chicken Production (ACP), which sets the minimum standards required by supermarkets and uses a red tractor logo.

Under these standards, the fastest-growing birds can be used and the permitted stocking density is 38kg per square metre, equivalent to about 19 chickens per square metre. It permits a mortality rate of up to 5%, which means that in some of the largest units - containing 30,000 or 40,000 chickens – up to 2,000 may perish.

Professor Sir Colin Sped-ding, chairman of ACP, said last week that he believed the standards adequately protected the chickens’ welfare when properly implemented, but they could always be improved. “ACP has more than 90% of the broiler producers as members and when we change standards it shifts the whole industry,” he said.

“But it has to be done on the basis of science and not force the producers to move faster than the economics allow.”

The RSPCA insists the industry needs to change faster. It has different standards under its own Freedom Food label which stipulates the use of slower-growing birds, a stocking density of 30kg (about 15 chickens) per square metre, and the inclusion of perch space and bales of hay to peck.

A Freedom Food chicken costs only about £1 or £2 more in the shops. But producers are reluctant to raise standards, unless shoppers are prepared to pay more, because their margins are so thin.

It costs about £1.20 to rear a standard broiler, including 24p for the chick, 70p for feed, 4p for labour and 3.5p for building maintenance and repairs.

Farmers say the profit margin on each bird is only 2p or 3p. More space for the birds and slower-growing animals come at a price - and that has to be picked up by shoppers.

Andrew Maunder, commercial director of the Devon-based Lloyd Maunder, which is one of the supermarkets’ largest suppliers of organic chickens and which allowed Oliver to film its broiler flocks, said: “We produce standard, Freedom Food, free range and organic chickens. We are open about what we do and the customer makes the choice. I could change all my standard chickens to Freedom Food standards tomorrow, but if people won’t pay the extra money to buy it I’ll go bankrupt.” ON Friday afternoon Stephen Howard, 41, from Balham, south London, was shopping at Waitrose for an organic chicken which cost £15. He never buys chicken produced to the minimum red tractor standards.

“When you actually see what they’re like you would never, ever buy or eat chicken that’s come from one of those farms,” he said. “It’s partly a question of the wellbeing of the birds, but also the birds taste so much better if they are well looked after.”

Sarah Ryan, 38, a mother of four, said it was sometimes difficult to put animal welfare before financial considerations. “You do wonder why the normal stuff is so much cheaper,” she said.

“The reality is that people have to look for value for money and you don’t think too much about where food comes from. It’s all very well for people like Jamie Oliver to say we should spend more to get better food, but he can afford to have high principles.”

Nevertheless, Leigh Grant, chief executive of Freedom Food, believes that raising standards is achievable. Freedom Food chickens account for 5% of fresh chicken and the proportion is rising.

Oliver has already been credited with improving the quality of school dinners - although some pupils are said to have given up school meals as a result - and the experience of other countries suggest that he could also enjoy success in his chicken campaign. In France free range chickens - known as Label Rouge - account for about 30% of the market.

With the consumer tide apparently turning in favour of animal welfare, Oliver may have picked the right moment to take up the cudgels. It will probably mean more expensive chicken for all of us - but we would eat better for it.

Your label guide: what the types mean

CHICKEN

Standard or supermarket own brands
Cheapest chicken in the store. Uses fastest-growing breeds and a high stocking density. Birds often suffer damage to legs and skin

Freedom Foods
The RSPCA label restricts the growth rate of the bird to reduce the chances of lameness and heart defects. The chickens have a bit more room, perching space and even get footballs to play with. But they are still kept indoors all the time

Free range
Allowed access to the outside - often in woods, fields and meadows - and have significantly more room. But they can still be given chemically treated feed and are reared en masse in sheds

Organic
The blue-bloods of the chicken world. They are reared in small flocks, can roam across the pasture and are given organic feed. Likely to peck quite a large hole in the wallet

EGGS

Standard eggs
The notorious “battery” hen laying standard eggs is typically kept in cages stacked in three tiers. They live in a space about the size of a piece of A4 paper. Laying hens often have part of their beak cut off to stop them pecking other chickens

Barn laid
Instead of cages, birds are given a series of perches and feeders but they have no outside access. The maximum stocking density is nine hens per square metre. Accounts for about 7% of the British egg market

Free range
Chickens are given access to the outside for at least eight hours a day, though they can still be kept in giant flocks of up to 16,000. Sales have rocketed in recent years

Organic
The birds are kept in smaller flocks, typically 2,000 or fewer. They are given organic feed and have access to open-air runs. But the eggs are expensive and remain a niche market

For the best local produce in your area visit the Times Real Food Directory

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• The Times obituary: Tomaz Humar
• Too proud to claim my Jaffa Cakes on expenses
• Leaders say sorry to transported children