I was reading the Doris Mash blog this morning – I’ve only just found it and I must just say that I’m enjoying it immensely – and I came across a snippet that she wrote in January this year about a campaign to stop battery chicken farming.
Now, I’ve been boycotting battery chicken meat and eggs for years. I found I was dwelling on the miserable, inhumane conditions that they lived in, and I realised that each time I bought six cheap eggs or a pack of cheap chicken, I was supporting the whole sorry process and that was simply unacceptable to me. At the time I made this decision, I couldn’t afford to buy free range meat, not that it was that easy to find, and so we simply did not eat chicken, and I bought barn eggs if I couldn’t find free range. Thankfully, these days most supermarkets have free range and/or organic chicken on the shelves, And in case you don’t know, by definition, organic has to be free range – one simply does not get organic battery chickens.
Anyway, the point of this little ramble today is to point you in the direction of a campaign to eliminate the whole sorry process of battery farming chickens. Don’t worry, there are no horrors on the page – in fact I didn’t see any at all on the site, though I didn’t open everything. Here you go – why don’t you go and read? Maybe you’ll feel moved to sign up to help let the chickens out.
Oh, and go take a look at the Battery Hen Welfare Trust’s website. They’re not extremists, they work with the farmers, and don’t condone terrorist behaviour. Again, thankfully, no horrors that I could see, and they have a neat slideshow of ‘ex-bats’ (ex-battery hens) now adopted out and living the good life. It’ll make you smile!
For those who want to see what a battery hen looks like when first released, click here for a picture kindly provided by the BHWT – HenInHand. Not a pretty sight.
Here’s a nicer pic, of a recovered ex-bat.
Picture courtesy of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.
The gallery of “Spoilt Hens” was rather inspiring!
The issue of free range / organic is so important and needs to continually be promoted so good on you. People need to not go on about how we are depriving lower income families from cheap meat and instead look at just how much meat we are eating and actually don’t need to eat. Before an animal is killed for our consumption we ought to at least make sure it is kept in reasonable welfare. It is NO hardship to eat less but better quality meat (and eggs). And the taste of the meat IS so much better.
Thanks Jay, for the heads up for my blog
“People need to not go on about how we are depriving lower income families from cheap meat and instead look at just how much meat we are eating and actually don’t need to eat.”
I totally agree, Doris! We’ve been ‘hand-to-mouth’ poor, there was a time when I bought most of the kids clothes from jumble sales and charity shops – mine too, come to that. But my family still ate fairly well without battery meat/eggs. We need perhaps to look back at the post-war generation and learn from them how to feed our families on a tight budget – I have some ancient cookery books and it’s amazing how little meat they used. No battery farms in those days (remember when chicken was a ‘Sunday dinner’ luxury?) and yet the population was healthy!