SUSTAINABILITY Why keep chickens?

WHAT YOU SEE, IS WHAT YOU GET The very best way to ensure the quality of the meat that you’re eating is to fatten up some chickens for yourself.


Put your own chicken on the table


Chris Brown

IF you were to get a pen and draw a big circle on a sheet of paper you could illustrate how things currently stand in regard to food and the consumer. The circle would need to fill the whole of the page, touching at the top, bottom and sides, leaving just a little space outside it at the corners. In the middle of this circle, in big bold letters, it would read ‘the price’, and tucked away in a corner, in small writing, it would read ‘everything else’.
Making things cheap to buy has of course got a downside - take chicken as an example. No longer is it a special occasion to sit down to a chicken dinner. It not long since a man had to work hard to be able to afford to buy a chicken from the butcher and pride was taken in all aspects of its serving.
The Sunday Roast was followed by sandwiches on Monday and broth on Tuesday as the last goodness was drained from the carcass; it was top quality food. Nowadays a rubbery pre-cooked chicken is bought on a whim in a foil bag from a filling station or take-away, the bones, if it comes with any, discarded into a nearby bin.
There are two main issues to consider, the first being the cruel conditions the birds have to suffer in order for them to become a cheap food item. Crammed by the thousands into vast sheds, never to see the light of day, the only consideration is to swell their weight as quickly as possible without a thought given to their miserable, unnatural existence: deep down I think everyone knows about this but most choose to turn a blind eye when pulling pre-pack chicken breasts off the supermarket shelf; focusing instead solely on the price.
Secondly, the quality of the meat produced should be of great concern to those eating it. Any animal kept in an overcrowded environment is susceptible to disease and to combat this antibiotics and other drugs are routinely added to the feed, as are growth hormones and heaven knows what else, that enable weight to go onto these birds as fast as can be done. Could food produced in this way be harmful to our well-being? According to the Department of Health’s ‘task force on obesity’ report, 300,000 Irish children are overweight or obese and this figure is rising by more than 10,000 per year; shocking statistics I think you will agree. We really need to take seriously what foods we eat and how they’re produced; and who can say for sure that chicken and chicken product that’s grown using tactics that put on maximum weight in the shortest possible time isn’t having a similar effect on those who eat it?

Grow your own
The very best way to ensure both a huge improvement in chickens’ welfare and to be sure about the quality of the meat that you’re eating is to fatten up some chickens for yourself. That way you will quickly appreciate the occasion of having a roast chicken dinner again and if you’re blessed with children it will be of great benefit to them to see where food comes from.
We should take more responsibility for our diet and the value we place on its origin- and to be involved in the feeding, housing and preparing for the table a ‘jungle fowl’ which can feed eight people a good hearty meal and supply the bones for that nearly forgotten art of stock making as well, is a great way to achieve that. What better accompaniment could there be for all those lovely vegetables that are hopefully being pulled from your back garden!Eat well, eat your own chickens.

Next Time How to grow table chickens.