Mad and sad over fate of chickens

THERE’S not much I feel strongly about any more, I’m too old and too lazy these days to go banner waving down The Mall. Live-and-let-live is what I say — if you want to run naked up and down Union Street, good luck to you.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t turn out to cheer though, I’m not big on momentous events. You’re talking to the woman who didn’t even get out of bed for the eclipse.

I contemplated it, don’t get me wrong, but when all’s said and done, what was it but just another night, albeit a short one?

So, while the entire street gathered outside with their little bits of cardboard with pinholes in (don’t ask me what they were for) I merely turned over, switched on the lamp (it suddenly got dark) and read another chapter.

But I do get a bit het up about the way we breed animals for meat. So when Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall took on Tesco (”Chickens, Hugh and Tesco”, Ch4, January 26) about battery chickens I knew it would be safer, for my blood pressure if nothing else, to watch t’other side. So I did.

Him Indoors, however, had other ideas. Thanks to Sky+ I got to watch it last night.

It made me mad, it made me sad and, frankly, it made me pretty sick too. I believe there is a duty we have, as thinking creatures, to ensure dumb animals live a fairly decent life before being despatched to our dinner plates — which, in the case of chickens, is done with unseemly haste.

But, like I said, live-and-let-live — if you’re happy munching away on a drumstick that spent its whole life sitting in urine because there wasn’t space to stand up, that’s your call.

If you don’t mind chomping the breast of a chick who pulled out all its feathers because it was squashed into a space designed for 13,999 others, but actually home to around 43,000, that’s up to you.

If all that matters is you being able to buy two chickens for a fiver, no matter that the poor things were force-fed and kept inside in artificial light 24-hours a day, for the entirety of their four-week life, don’t let me put you off your chicken and chips.

I can’t boycott Tesco chickens, because I’m a vegetarian. So I’ll be doing the next best thing — boycotting Tesco until it decides to take battery chickens off its chiller shelves.

PS, Talking about birds, I tried the new Walkers Crispy Duck & Hoisin-flavour crisps while watching said programme. They were horrible — I even left some, and that should tell you something.