Cheap chicken is foul

The other day I bought chicken chops. 

I went along to Belmore Butcher to buy my ethical, biodynamic free range meat - hoping to come out with the heady thrill and lets face it, smugness, of doing the right thing for the chicken and the right the for the world. I wanted to feel the glowing buzz of being a 'good global citizen'. 

Instead, I scuttled back into my car feeling kicked in the guts and a little foolish about having just handed over $31.50 for my 8 little chicken chops. (Who ever heard of chicken chops anyway? I wanted marylands. Or I wanted drumstick and thighs. But thats what the friendly, old-school butcher offered and I was too shy to question. Whats with this fancy 'chop' business?? And is that why it cost so much? Is that why they did't have prices on anything??) I felt stung. 

It tasted delicious, fed me and Hoof and a friend for a dinner one night, and then Hoof and I the next. Five meals in total = $6.30 of chicken per meal. Not bad value. But still I continued to feel a little uncomfortable about the price. I'm on a fairly poultry salary (*boom tish*) and sometimes the grocery bill is a shock. I like to do the right thing, I like to see myself as the person doing the right thing.. and yet my hip pocket still really hurt. 

That is until a couple nights later, reading the chapter on chicken production in 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer.  

When we think of factory farming and chickens we often think of 'Battery hens' and we probably think we have solved that problem to some extent. Chickens aren't in cages any more right? They are in big barns, they have straw on the floor, they can move around, there are pictures on the packets and it looks kinda fine. It's all good right? Wrong.

I won't tell you everything about factory farming because I'm not an expert. [Jonathan Safran Foer and Peter Singer and Anna Krien are - read their stuff) But here are some highlights that are beyond the ubiquitous thought of 'The chickens don't have enough space - thats why factory farming is bad'.

It's not just about animal welfare. Its about our welfare too. These chickens can be truly foul. 

Here goes. 

Those cheap chickens we eat have been roaming around a barn with a floor covered in putrid shit along with the chickens who have died and are rotting and decomposing. They are bread to grow so fast and so fat that their bones often break under the strain. This means they are hobbling around with their bodies dragging around in all the shit. Gross. 

'Free-roaming' sounds good huh? All it means is 'no cages'. It doesn't mean they have a whole lot of room. They are required to have access to outside. But this 'access' can just be a tiny opening in a huge barn with mesh across it and doesn't mean they can actually get out. 

Did you know about the lights? They often keep lights on for long periods of time, or keep them off for long periods of time to force chicken's body clocks into unnatural cycles - to make them grow faster, eat more, sleep less, to modify their behaviour, force molting and to change their laying patterns. Its madness. 

And the killing part? Chickens are meant to have their throats cut before they go into scalding water. Many go in alive. Then they go to the mechanised eviscerator. This is the gross bit. If the machine doesn't cleanly remove the guts and innards it means that the intestines break and shit goes all over the chicken. Next they go into another vat of water  - which pretty much becomes shit soup - every single chicken, contaminated or not, goes through this vat to get 'cleaned', and also in order to soak in some water to increase the weight of the chicken that arrives in our supermarket, and eventually our plate. Yuck. This shit can literally make you sick. Ever had a 24 hour tummy bug? Could be from the amount of faeces you just ate in your last chicken meal. 

Suddenly, paying 32 bucks for 8 chicken chops didm't seem so bad. If I can't afford a chicken that has been raised and fed properly, and killed cleanly and humanely - I just shouldn't be buying or eating chicken. Simple. 

More about our unsustainble demand and expectations for animal protein in future posts. 

More reading about factory farming at Farm Sanctuary 

And an extract from the PETA site:

More than 9 billion “broiler” chickens are raised in sheds each year.(9) Artificial lighting is manipulated to keep the birds eating as often as possible. To keep up with demand and to reduce production costs, genetic selection calls for big birds and fast growth (it now takes only 6 weeks to “grow out” a chick to “processing” weight), which causes extremely painful joint and bone conditions.(10) Undercover investigations into the “broiler” chicken industry have repeatedly revealed that birds were suffering from dehydration, respiratory diseases, bacterial infections, heart attacks, crippled legs, and other serious ailments.

At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung upside-down, their legs are forced into metal shackles, their throats are slit, and they are immersed in scalding-hot defeathering tanks. They are often conscious throughout the entire process. Click here to read more about an undercover investigation at a KFC supplier’s slaughterhouse, where workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls.

Great video from Australian Animals at Makeitpossible.com

Avoid Supermarkets - Protest with your $'s 

A great article relating to my last post about why I try to avoid the duopoly. 

"Martin Oliver provides insight into how retail giants stomp on small shop owners and farmers, and what consumers can do to help keep local businesses alive.

Of all countries in the world, Australia has the most concentrated supermarket sector, with Coles and Woolworths controlling about 80% of the market. " Read more

Why do I try to avoid the duopololy?

Did you know $40 out of every $100 spent in Australia goes to the duopoly? It's crazy! 

Woolworths and Wesfarmers (Coles) not only own the two biggest supermarkets, they also own a tonne of bottle shops, petrol stations, electronics shops and office supply shops  - all masquerading under a myriad of names to give you the idea that there is competition and variety. Not so. Not to mention now they are branching into gambling and insurance. The 'Little Red Quote' campaign makes me want to put a little red hole in my head. But I digress. 

The point is, with such a huge dominant market share, these two industry giants have a huge hold over what we can buy and what choices we have. They have immense power to squeeze out, buy out, and undermine small businesses and can totally devastate the economic viability of producers. Every time we get a cheaper product off the shelf at the duopoly, it will probably be at the expense of the people who produced it. The effect on Australian farmers is two fold - they either remain independent and have to compete with unsustainably low prices of the retail giants, or they have to submit and supply to them. In this case they will no doubt get squeezed and squeezed for price until they are making next to no profit, laying off workers, razing unprofitable orchards, and producing lesser quality product for the sake of margins and efficiency. As a shopper at the duopololy, you will get wonderfully cheap prices, but you get less and less choice and quality. 

Within the supermarkets it is getting increasingly difficult to find products that are not home brand. Cleverly, they are often dressed up in different disguises to give you the sense of choice and diversity. Home brand used to mean the one with plain packaging on the bottom shelf at the cheapest price. Nowadays there is the discount range, the midrange, the made-to-look-fancy range and also the cunning made-to-look-independent organic range. Macro Wholefoods, with it's earthy logos and colour scheme, it's matt finish packaging, and it's focus on health is STILL OWNED BY THE DUOPOLY!!

I'm sick of it. And I want choice. 

The objective of avoiding the duopoly is to:

• support smaller producers and local producers

• support economic diversity in the market place 

• support family businesses

• support community

• support Australian farmers

• encourage diversity, options, choice and ensure these things for the future

• support growing food at home and sharing and swapping with friends and neighbours

The method:

Shop at famers markets - some favourites:

• Fairfield Farmers Market

• Coburg Farmers market 

• Abbotsford Convent

• Ceres Organic Market

• Preston Market

Shop at independent supermarkets and grocers - some favourites:

• Cozzella Bros - 111 Dundas St, Preston

• Psorakos - 2/8 Clarendon St  Thornbury

• Bivianos

• Other independent supermarket options: IGA, FoodWorks

• Berties Butcher

• Belmore Butcher 

• Richmond Oysters 

Shop at independent bottle shops- some favourites:

• Carwyn Cellars 

• Duncan's 

• The Cleanskin place on Station St, Fairfield that appears to have no name - Opposite Bivianos

Grow food at home

• Swap food with family and friends. 

Non-food

• Shop at local, independent nurseries and hardware shops. This is a shame because I used to love going to Bunnings. But I LOVE going to Bulleen Art and Garden for plants and they are big advocates for sustainability, permaculture, food security and urban ecoculture. 

Some dilemmas:

I will talk about dilemmas and contradictions in upcoming posts.  

Each goal has many dilemmas. A few that come up in this topic are:

• To get around to all these places often means I need to travel further, and to more places, and often need to use my car. This results a bigger carbon footprint than if i just walk up to the Woolies at the end of the street. 

• Shopping at smaller places or at butchers, fishmongers, grocers, and delicatessens rather than a whopping big supermarket means you seldom get everything in the one place. This means a lot of running around which can be plain exhausting and very time consuming. Both Hoof and I have chronic health issues and energy is a very very precious resource to us. This is why we aim to shop independently 80% of the time and allow ourselves 20% spend at the duopoly. The Woolies at the end of the road is awfully convenient when we are having bad stretches of health. 

• Supporting diversity does not go hand in hand with supporting Australian famers. I do not aim to exclusively shop local or Australian made. There are benefits of import including a wider range of goods. There can be environmental benefits too. Sometimes even if products are flown between countries it does not make their carbon footprint higher, so it may have greater negative environmental impact to buy it locally (which goes against the 'Think Global, Shop Local' maxim). More on that later. Also, only buying Australian products can undermine the economic systems of some of the poorest countries in the world which can result in depriving some of the poorest people in the world a viable income. 

Some reading

Taking on the supermarket giants

Grocery duopoly takes $40 of every $100 spent in Australia

Until next time. 

Pup.

The original commitment - New Years Resolution 2013

Last year I learnt a lot about ethical food consumption, sustainable food and agricultural practices, and animal cruelty and factory farming. I read tonnes of books, articles, journals, and websites about it all. Like always, I wanted to modify my behaviour accordingly in order to be a better, more responsible, less damaging global citizen. 

Easier said than done. 

There is no clear path to being a 'good' global citizen. Sustainability, environmentalism, anti-dupololism, fair trade and humane treatment of animals do not always align. Sometimes trying to do the right thing for fair trade, may mean making less sustainable choices. Sometimes thinking global does not always equate to shopping local. 

It can be a quagmire of ethical dilemmas. And pretty soon all my newfound knowledge had me cracking a sweat every time I shopped with the burden of making the right decision and the guilt if I didn't and the shame of not always knowing which end cause was more important. I became paralysed by indecision and totally overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Shopping shouldn't be that stressful or guilt inducing. But it is an important way to make your consumer dollar align with your ethics. As Anne Lappé from The Small Planet Institute says: "Every time you spend money you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want."

To avoid the guilt and the dilemmas I needed to simplify. 

So in our household, we made a list of things that are important to us, and things that we are willing to commit to. [Pictured and listed below] We have been trying to live by the list since January.

Its not always easy, we do not always manage to achieve it all, but we do always try. And I think by constantly trying and constantly assessing our spending habits and food choices, hopefully we are doing just a tiny bit to help make the world a better place and to share these ideas with others. 

I'm going to use this blog to track our efforts and discuss the challenges. Hopefully it will also generate some conversation and enthusiasm with others along the way. 

Enjoy. 

The Commitment

Objectives: 

• Minimise negative environmental impact through food/consumption choices

• Encourage diverse, sustainable and fair agricultural practices by avoiding shopping at monopolies.

• Encourage ethical and humane treatment of animals by supporting ethical meats production

Method: 

• Only eat red meat ONCE A WEEK (2 x is allowed if kangaroo)    

• Only buy meat from ethical/sustainable independent/biodynamic butchers (kangaroo excepted)

• Shop independently 80% of the time - Avoid the DUOPOLY (Coles and Woolworths) and its subsidiaries (Dan Murpheys, BWS, Bunnings etc) –especially for fruit, veg, meat and plants 

• If shopping at the duopololy don’t buy supermarket brands

• Eat less tinned tuna. ONLY eat sustainable / responsibly caught tuna. Saffcol and Tassal          

• Eat salmon instead of tuna

• ALWAYS grow some food

• Only free range chicken

• Only free range eggs

• Only FairTrade Coffee

• Don't throw food away. Always use leftovers

• Always refer to sustainable fish guide when buying fish or ask fishmonger