by frog
Tonight TVNZ is showing Jamie Oliver’s The Big Food Fight: Jamie’s Fowl Dinners where the English chef as he usually does, hosts a dinner, but this time to demonstrate the reality of how chickens live and die to put food on our plates:
With the help of poultry farmers and experts, Jamie brings together consumers, producers and retailers to form a live debate on how chickens and eggs are produced and consumed and whether things need to change.
Live in front of his guests, Jamie uses demonstrations, films and interviews to highlight key aspects of chicken and egg production, including how chicks and chickens are actually killed.
So, if you’re eating chicken for dinner tonight you might want to eat it early. Because it won’t taste so good later on. There’s some youtube coverage of Oliver’s show that I might post after it’s been aired tonight.
On a different topic, Oliver was also on Stuff this morning criticising English cuisine for being too focused on “big TVs, mobile phones and fast cars as well as getting drunk in pubs”.
It’s linked to the new poverty.
It’s nothing to do with famine or war – quite the opposite. England is one of the richest countries in the world.
The people I’m telling you about have huge TV sets – a lot bigger than mine! They have state-of-the-art mobile phones, cars, and they go and get drunk in pubs at the weekend – their poverty shows in the way they feed themselves.
English chefs don’t hold back to they? Mind you, Oliver is referring to an insidious type of cultural poverty that we should be wary of here in New Zealand too. Shared meals of local, healthy food and conversations from the day can too easily be replaced by the isolation of defrosted meals and takeaways unless we work actively to protect a space for families to have the time and resources to grow buy and cook their healthy local shared meals.
Photo credit: Farm Sanctuary
Published in Health & Wellbeing | Media by frog on Tue, August 26th, 2008
Tags: cicken, Food, jamie Oliver, Jamie's Fowl Dinners, slaughter, The Big Food Fight, TVNZ
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
After that programme aired in the UK demand for free-range and organic chickens soared. Hope that happens here too
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I think if you regard the abolition of slavery and equal (voting) rights for women (in many countries at any rate) as great leaps forward in human endeavour, you may well need to consider that a human wholesale move to vegetarianism (or veganism) as well as the curtailment of animal experimentation could be the next great leap forward. I won’t hold my breath, thogh.
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This is exactly the type of thing that made me once vote Green, if you spent more time on issues like this you would be looking at 10% plus in the house.
What a pity that you will not be there to push this, sure as hell none of the other parties will do anything about it.
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This is one issue in which I am 100% in agreement with BB, though I disgree with just about everything else he writes. But it does show that Greens can attract voters from different parts of the political spectrum.
BB is right that none of the other parties will do anything about it. The only other party with an animal welfare policy is the Maori party, but the Maori party MP on the Regulations review committe that decided the code of welfare for layer hens was unlawful did not do anything to try and get the recommendation voted for in the house. Sue Kedgley was also on the committee but only as a seconded member so she could not make the recommendation to the house.
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Well I have nothing against vegitarianism, I love fresh veges and im not too fond of meat; I would love to see a mass movement towards vegetarianism! But animal experimentation as very much a vital part of technological evolution, leave it alone, stop protesting! These people releasing the geneticly modified beagles, terrorising the animal testing facilities and destroying the crops should be put down! So long as the animals are not subjected to more suffering than is neccacary then I dont see a moral problem with it, though I do think make-up products should be tested on humans, just because im abit of a sadist and hate make-up.
Animal welfare; certainly. Animal rights; get a hold of yourself you rabid corgie!
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I’m curious, would you really vote for a party on the basis of its animal welfare policy when you disagreed fundamentally with its economic and social policies? I wouldn’t vote for National if they decided to ban factory farming.
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Will you folk be watching tonight?
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While I agree with you BB, keep in mind that there are people who think that cruelty to animals is perfectly acceptable, and think animal rights is as “silly” as vegetarianism, pacifism, environmentalism, minority rights, identity politics, or a number of other hot-button issues that might matter to other people. Sadly. And a lot of the ones of that opinion in Parliament are National, Act, or Labour MPs.
I’d love to see some animal welfare bills from the Greens next time- but that depends on either a coalition agreement or a member’s bill coming up that we can negotiate through the house. And sadly we’re don’t even get half of the member’s bills drawn from the ballot that we propose, so somehow I don’t think we’d have good odds on that.
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Ah, so you did once vote Green BB! Now that one can be my little number to post on Key wee-blog at at time and occasion that I choose. I’ve saved that post. Now we’re tit-for-tat!
BTW, I’m pissed off, because I have to be on a Green Party conference call at the time Jamie’s Fowl Dinners is on.
If anyone misses it, at least go here.
Another celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsey is also taking a very Green perspective on food.
Fines, as Gordon advocates, for serving out of season food flown half way round the world might be a bit authoritarian for Green principles, but he’s on the right track.
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Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall is the other member of the UK chef triumvirate working for local food and animal welfare.
I haven’t decided whether to watch tonight or not, might record it for later.
I’ll be interested to see the NZ response, are we tougher than the UK audience and do we already know more about how bad factory chickens get treated?
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Toad
Its no secret that I was once a Green Voter.
Now while we are on the subject of “saved posts” I think you may well find that it is once again “advantage Big Bro” given your latest little admission over at DPF’s.
Something about circles I think….
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weka said: >i>Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall is the other member of the UK chef triumvirate working for local food and animal welfare.
There are several others. Matthew Fort, Matt Tebbutt, Tom Parker-Bowles (yes, Prince Charlies’s stepson).
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How thoroughly appropriate the Greens are posting on ‘chickens’ tonight
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toad, I believe Ramsay has a restaurant in Dubai, so he’s certainly still be flying food in, just depends how far away it comes from.
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So Sapient you may not agree with me over animal testing, but stating that you would like to put down anyone who does not agree with you could be construed as a death threat and is typical of the type of mindless violence meted out by animal abuse supporters.
In 20 years of animal rights activism, no sentient being, human or animal has been killed. How many industrial sites have that sort of safety record? In contrast, a number of activists have lost their lives and a great many more have suffered GBH from goons who enjoy abusing animals and humans. But the real violence to millions of innocent animals is beyond decent contemplation. Who is the real terrorist?
Most animal experiments in New Zealand are not in fact for medical purposes but are to produce even more meat and milk from already over-stressed farm animals in a country so awash with animal protein that we have an obesity epidemic.
The rest of them are used for really essential research (not) like toxicity testing for shellfish and finding ways of keeping racehorses from going lame (apart form the tried and true rest and recuperation, which would lose money for the industry). We also use them to find “cures” for the obesity, heart disease and other self inflicted injuries we bring on ourselves from too much animal protein.
And yes, if National promised to abolish sow crates, fast growing broiler chicken production, battery cages and animal experiments I would vote for them even though I disagree with most of their other policies. But they won’t.
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StephenR said: I believe Ramsay has a restaurant in Dubai, so he’s certainly still be flying food in…
Okay, StephenR – I usually research background to my posts in some detail, but on this occasion just related what I have seen on Sky’s food channel. 5 min from being on an important conference call and all that. Pity work deadlines have to come ahead of blogging!
Anyway, will look into Ramsey’s green credentials in more detail.
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Kiore,
Ever heard of tounge-in-cheek comments? If I seriously thought they should be put down I would be out there offering the service; though Id have no objections if they wanted to euthenise themselves, liberty and all that after all.
Rights arise out of the social contract and a specific requirement for obtaining a right is to give up the associated freedom, non-sapient animals are unable to conciously give up these freedoms nor to exercise them and therefore do, and can, not obtain rights. Even small children and the mentally retarded are unentitled to rights by all definitions, the fact that they are extended to them is because socety recognizes it as benificial.
Animal welfare is a just cause and we can extend to non-human animals certain privledges in their treatment and ensure a minimum of suffering if doing so benifits society. If the benifits of each particular case of animal testing surpass the costs to society then it is perfictly justifiable to do the testing. If one must cause some suffering to enhance the lives of others by more than the suffering generated then so be it.
All those issues, with the exception of animal testing, that you raise in your last paragraph are issues with animal welfare and not animal rights and I support them.
In relation to the show; I did not no there was such a thing as liquid eggs and long eggs! but with the exception of those I find it surprising that anyone would find any of that surprising or unexpected. I guess people just dont think/ are doctrinated not to think.
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Perhaps there is something wrong with my sense of humour, but I cannot accept death threats as funny. Maybe something to do with being on the receiving end of too many of them, not to mention other abuse from morally illiterate supporters of animal abuse. There also seems to be a bit of a double standard; when BB threatened GBH to animal abusers, frog removed the posting, but death threats to those standing up to abuse of animals appears to be acceptable.
And yes I have heard the contractualism argument for rights before, but it is fatally flawed because it does not take into account obligations of moral agents. Just because animals, children, foetuses, the intellectually disabled and other moral agents cannot claim a right does not mean moral agents have no obligations to stop abusing them. We are not talking about positive rights at all, but simply the obligation of rich and powerful humans to leave non-moral agents alone, and stop abusing them for trivial purposes such as toxicity testing.
An interesting thinker in this regards is Matthew Sculley.. He goes out of his way to make it clear he does not believe in rights, is not an animal rights activist, and then publishes views that are indistinguishable from those an animal rights activist would write. So if you want to call it animal welfare thats fine; you can call it Bob for all I care. The main point is that animals (as well as human non-moral agents) should be left alone and not tortured hideously for any trivial want that the rich and powerful can think of, as is the current case.
You may also not be aware (because big pharma and others with a vested interest in the status quo will ensure you are kept unaware), but a great many respectable scientists, veterinarians and doctors are questioning the validity of animal testing and are publishing their results in distinguished peer reviewed medical journals. The animal abusing industry is meeting this challenge from scientists in time honoured fashion. By personal slurs, scaremongering and not engaging in the science.
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toad, dunno if Ramsay is making pretensions as to GREEN credentials – I think you’ll find he’s just being a chef. That is, a fresh food super-fan.
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Weka
You ask a reasonable question and it deserves a reasonable answer.
The reason I would vote for a party (any party actually) on the basis of its animal welfare policy is because it is a cause that I am absolutely passionate about, sure there are policies that annoy me and things that I wish our government had not inflicted upon us but at best these things irritate me and if I do not agree with them I simply ignore them.
I judge people (rightly or wrongly) on how we treat their animals and it is inconceivable to me in this modern world that anybody could support the practice of battery hens or pigs in crates (to name only two)
I passionately believe that farmed animals have a right to be treated well and ultimately have a quick, painless and most importantly UNEXPECTED death, anybody who has seen the terror experienced by animals arriving at an abattoir will know what I am driving at when I say that the unexpected part of their demise is vital.
The upshot of all this Weka is that while I will always disagree with the social policies of the Greens I would be prepared to hold my nose and give two ticks to the Greens if they made animal welfare a non negotiable part of any coalition agreement.
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Sorry, Toad:
but having work in the food industry for a little while, Ramsay is my idea of hell-on-wheels for a chef to work with, and I wouldn’t be quoting him on anything to do with food production or service!!
Jamie Oliver, while he may grate at times as deeply upper-middle class essex-boy, is at least not one to abuse his kitchen staff to the end of their ability to cope.
And the wee fluffy chicks werre so cute – until he explained what happens to the unwanted boy chickens! Cue white-faced, teary-eyed essex girls in front tables…
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Kiore,
Well animal testing certainly isint being questioned in my feild, It was at the turn of last century but those debates are long dead in most cases.
I like how you rely on the idea of ‘moral agents’, you are of course aware that morals are dictated by society and that morals change as you change cultures? most morals we find ourselves with today are mearly the product of the affulent masses and are no more valid than morals that, for arguements sake, state that one should slaughter humans to keep the population down and ensure that Gaia may flourish. Morals are nothing more than a tool used to keep the mindless masses under control and should never be used for an argument as they have absolutly no substantive quality, one should look behind the ‘morals’ and see what informs them, some of them have a place because they benifit society but most do not. dont forget that homosexuality, womens sufferage, the ‘right’ to education and all that which you cherish is open to moral interpritations with peopel on both sides. Morals are irrelivant past accounting for their precence in the population overwhich one is sovereign or with which one interacts.
And it is not if you find a death threat to be funny, it is if you interpret it as being a death threat in the first place. dont forget that the reason you would get death threats would be because you and your militant ‘morals’ clash with the morals of those others. morals are not absolute, so dont try that discusting arguement around me.
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katie said: Ramsay is my idea of hell-on-wheels for a chef to work with…
Point taken katie.
I should have restricted that comment to his commitment to the Green ecological sustainablility Charter Principle. On the other Charter principles (non-violence, appropriate decison-making, and social justice) he does seem to fall well short of the mark.
But let’s not stereotype Essex girls – I’m sure there are some staunch Green feminists among them.
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Ramsey is a fraud in my opinion (as a person, I do not doubt his cooking skills), I was living in the UK at the time Ramsey was employed at a restaurant called Aubergine.
To be fair he did have a bit of a name for himself among foodies and there was a waiting list of over six months to get a table at the Aubergine restaurant however he was not what one could call a house hold name.
His initial “fame” came about due to his sudden departure from the Aubergine restaurant and the subsequent legal battles that ensued.
The press soon cottoned on to this brash, rude and abusive young chef who made no secret of his intense dislike of what he called “The w***ers who ponce about on celebrity Chef or cooking shows”
At stage of his life his only goal was to achieve his second Michelin star (and I believe he has gone onto obtain a third) and nothing else was important, I well remember an interview in one of the Sunday papers (as an aside the quality of the UK press is reason enough to visit the UK) where he again pilloried all those who appeared on TC shows and was down right ruse to Jamie Oliver and co, he even went as far as saying “anyway, why do these w***ers call themselves Chef’s, I don’t, I am a cook and I am going to be the best cook in the world”
Ramsey seems to have forgotten those words as it is difficult to turn on the TV these days without seeing his face.
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Ramsey’s actually had 12 Michelin Stars, and been the third UK chef to hold 3 at one time.
And he’s good on local sourcing of produce and ecological sustainability generally. But, as Katie said, he’s very bad on other Green principles.
They are the ones you don’t agree with BB – I thought he’d be your No 2 UK hero (behind Margaret Thatcher, of course).
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Toad
How could I be a fan of Ramsey, he played for Rangers!
And by the way, that is Baronesses Thatcher you are talking about, I would prefer you to use her full and proper title.
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“Morals are nothing more than a tool used to keep the mindless masses under control and should never be used for an argument as they have absolutly no substantive quality, one should look behind the ‘morals’ and see what informs them”
But in your own argument you are using a moral principle that we should be allowed to do what we like to animals so we can benefit humans are legitimate, So why are you allowed to change the rules in the middle of the argument, so you can use morals in an argument but I can’t. Either morals are legitimate or they are not, which means they have to be argued on their merits. That is the problem with moral relativism; it is self contradictory.
And the reason I get death threats from animal abusers is quite simply because they are violent people generally. The link between abuse of animals and abuse of humans has pretty well been established. In any event both the SPCA and police take it seriously enough for them to inform each other of cases of abuse.
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kiore,
of course there is a correlation between people being violent in general and people being violent to animals, but what I am talking about has very little to do with being violent.
You are correct that I make an assertion without a purly logical basis, but it is not the one you claim, my assertion is mearly that one should do what one can to ensure the survival of gaian life to the highest standard possible, for the longest time possible. From this I draw all my opinions of virtuous behaviour and actions. This is my one assumption, but it is not of a moral nature and I do not use it as a basis for my arguements, instead I take a presumed shared view and argue from that basis, you on the otherhand take moral assumptions and argue from them as a basis; my meathod is perfectly logically valid, yours, however, is fataly flawed. I support animal welfare not because I see it as the ethical thing to do or because of a moral posistion, I support it because I perceive the costs of allowing such violence to surpass the benifits.
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“my assertion is mearly that one should do what one can to ensure the survival of gaian life to the highest standard possible, for the longest time possible”
Also a moral assertion. Anything with “should”, “shouldn’t”, “must” etc in it is a moral assertion. So moral assertions are okay when you make them but can be dismissed when anyone else makes them. Why?
And I don’t see how my arguments are illogical. You have yet to even define yours. What exactly do you mean by “Gaian life”. It is not something I have seen in any philosophical text. When you strip it from its flowery language it seems what you are saying is that we are justified in doing anything possible on the off chance that something resembling the human species may have a chance to crawl around for a bit longer. My view is perfectly logical, it is simply an extension of the Golden Rule to all sentient forms of life.
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Kiore,
Agreed that any assertion that is prescriptive in nature is by that very trait a value laden statement. The difference is in the degree of divergance from logical reasoning that weakens the ability of that statement to convincingly argue that prescriptive clause.
Value laden clauses are not okay when I make them, nor are they neccacarily wrong when another makes them, the permisiveness of such a clause is dependant apon the circumstance. I do not dismiss your statements out of hand, I inspect them and attempt to work out what informs those statements; your statements are value laden and appear to arise from other value laden statements which in turn do the same, as such illustrating a strong divergence from logical reasoning.
To make any prescriptive arguement, such as one must on a political blog, one must take a moral stance as a rock from which to argue unless a defined end is cited, the strength of those arguements being derived from the degree of divergence from logic of that moral stance. As previously stated; the moral stance that you take results in a arguement with little arguementive strength. I admit that mine has little also, though it is prehaps as close to logic as a non end defined arguement may be.
In its most raw form my arguement, and my one assumed value, is that a machine should do what it has been designed to do.
By ‘Gaian Life’ I refer to the particular strand of life from which we have evolved that creates the interactive system known as ‘Gaia’ and by ‘Life’ I refer to any substance that may sucessfully, through interaction with its environment, bring about its own self replication.
Assuming a atheistic context; all organisms are machines that have been created, through the forces of evolution, to further enhance the replicative ability and success of the relivant life, in a human context this would be the individual alleles and combinations there of.
As such a human, as an organism, should work to further enhance the replicative ability and success of any of their most basic Life’.
Since all Gaian Life shares common elements of Life, the human should therefore work to ensure the survival of all Life that has arisen as a part of Gaia.
That is my most basic arguement, notice how I make only two assumptions there and one value laden statement; The result being that my arguement is much stronger than yours. And yes, I do view it as the purpose of any organism to work, unconciously, to ensure that their common ‘Life’ ‘crawls around’ for as long as possible. Life may not have any real purpose and the continuation may have little ultimate consequence but it is the closest to a ‘meaning of life’ which one can, atheisticly, assume.
As for the logic for your arguement, lets examine just your last sentance;
Firstly; what logical reason is there to extend this ‘golden rule’ to all forms of life?
Secondly; what logical reason is there for this ‘golden rule’ in the first place?
I can justify both of those under given circumstances, with my assertion, through perfectly logical paths; however, as aforementioned, I do not beleive that you have followed such logic but instead rely on other moralistic assumptions drawn from a similar process. So please enlighten me as to you logic, as I see very little of it present in your arguements.
Sapient
“The machine which we call ‘Man’ is always and ever, from prior to birth to after his return to dust, a victim of circumstance.”
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I may be ruffling a few feathers here, but one has to laugh at the media spin on the results of the study of layer hen farms commissioned by MAF – see http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/hen-farming-study-challenges-misconceptions-2702971
According to the TVNZ website, it found “…each method of farming had its advantages and issues: feather loss was worse in cages whereas higher mortality rates and injuries were more prevalent in all non-cage systems.”
If we took two human guinea pigs, and put one in a cage where they led a boring but no-risk life, I am sure the mortality rate would be less than if they functioned like you and I and took the risks involved with normal life (e.g. for humans crossing roads, flying, swimming etc). Now would you rather have a happy, fulfilled life with the risk of a shorter life, or be kept in a box where there was no risk?
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“..I passionately believe that farmed animals have a right to be treated well and ultimately have a quick, painless and most importantly UNEXPECTED death, anybody who has seen the terror experienced by animals arriving at an abattoir will know what I am driving at when I say that the unexpected part of their demise is vital.
The upshot of all this Weka is that while I will always disagree with the social policies of the Greens I would be prepared to hold my nose and give two ticks to the Greens if they made animal welfare a non negotiable part of any coalition agreement..
um..!..big bro..
why aren’t you a vegan/abolitionist..?
anything else is just enabling the horrors to continue..
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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