Intensive farming is a solution, not the problem

It all sounds so simple, clearcut and animal friendly when presented by a television celebrity who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Poor little chickens are suffering in nasty, confined sheds on intensive farms so we’ll get a law passed to force uncaring British farmers to open the doors and let their chickens run free.

Then we can relax and feel good because our little feathered friends are happily pecking about in the great outdoors.

What a load of tosh, nonsense, rubbish and piffle.

Intensive chicken farming in Britain is not the problem. It is merely one of many agribusiness responses and solutions to a much more complex set of challenges, situations and issues.

At the most fundamental level, there is one major, almost overwhelming, challenge.

Britain, and indeed the world, has far more people than it can feed by extensive means.

The British and global populations are now so vast as to be unsupportable without some degree of intensive agriculture.

Without a drastic reduction in population that fundamental fact cannot be changed.

Does that mean nothing can be done?

Of course it can, but only by looking honestly at the other issues and challenges that push intensification further than population growth alone would do.

First and foremost among those issues is that of modern consumer capitalism with its mantra of pay less, consume more, satisfy your every desire.

We in the West, and increasingly the rising middle classes of the developing world, see what were once luxuries as daily necessities and what were once daily necessities as things of little value.

Average British household expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks, for instance, fell from 23% of total weekly expenditure in 1980 to 16% in 2003-04 and to 10.16% in 2005-06.

On the other hand, in 2005-06 Britons spent 13.1% of their household expenditure on recreation and culture. Spending on restaurants and hotels was also higher than spending on food and drinks.

In other words, people prefer to spend more on having a good time than they do on having a good meal.

Of the £45 people spent on food in 2005-06, £10.10 went on meat.

When you consider that a 2kg organic whole chicken from Tesco would cost £10.98 (£5.49 a kilogram, 12 January 2008), that £10.10 won’t go far if spent on organic, free range meat.

The only way £10.10 can buy the quantities of meat that most non-vegetarian Britons eat each week is if that meat comes from intensive sources.

If Britons are not prepared to pay realistic prices for their meat, then supermarkets, butchers and other suppliers of meat must keep prices low, while competition forces them still lower.

But, supermarkets are not in business for altruistic reasons. They are in business to generate ever-increasing profits for their shareholders so they stoke the demand for cheaper meat, which further ups the demand for farmers to be more intensive, more efficient and less costly.

As Britain has neither the land nor the farmers to satisfy that demand in full, the supermarkets look further afield for sources that can.

This not only has the advantage of providing extra leverage to force British farmers to lower their prices and become even more intensive, but it also provides meat produced to lower standards than are required in the UK. That makes it even cheaper.

Even if all intensive British farmers were forced out of business tomorrow, those foreign sources of cheap meat would continue to satisfy the demand, simply shifting the animal welfare (plus human and environmental costs) offshore.

Existing international trade treaties permit, encourage and facilitate that trade, while politicians protest that requiring foreign producers to meet British regulatory standards would breach those treaties by being a form of protectionism.

Given all that, what would banning intensive indoor poultry farming in the UK actually achieve?

It would drive some farmers who lacked the land for free-range poultry farming out of business or force them to shift to other uses of their buildings.

It would drive some farmers to technological fixes that allowed them to farm intensively while still meeting regulatory requirements.

It would increase the price of British-produced chicken far above that of imports from countries with lower regulatory standards, driving more farmers out of business as consumers opted for the cheaper product.

It would shift the animal welfare issues off-shore, out of sight and out of mind, making a lot of people feel good but without changing anything for the animals.

And it would make certain celebrities national heroes for a time.

Neat, simple and totally ineffective at improving conditions for a multitude of chickens - and other livestock as intensive farming is not restricted to chickens alone.

As is almost always the case, real, meaningful change would be much more difficult to achieve, especially if we are not prepared to be honest without ourselves, then set about changing our philosophy and priorities.

Where can we start?

We can:

• Consume less meat, not just chicken but all meat.
• Put a higher priority on food spending than on recreation, culture, alcohol, tobacco and other indulgences.
• Use the money freed up by spending less on indulgences to buy the best quality meat we can afford — organic first, then genuine free range, then intensive free range, and intensive indoor last.
• Eat all the animal, not just the prime or fashionable cuts.
• Serve only enough meat for a person to eat and throw none in the bin. We can avoid cooking too much in the first place, or refrigerate/freeze any surpluses (and use them).
• Buy local first and buy British if you can’t buy local. (If you’re outside the UK, buy meat reared by your farmers.)
• Don’t buy ready meals, nuggets, shapes, and the like (most are made with intensively reared meat, often from overseas).
• Only eat at restaurants and buy from fast-food shops that declare they use only British-raised meat - and preferably from organic or free range sources.
• Encourage businesses to adopt a policy of sourcing meat for staff canteens and cafeterias from British organic and free-range sources. And support positive changes by eating in the canteen.
• Press politicians for more and better enforcement of existing regulations – the bigger a producer is, the more likely it is that it’s sins will be forgiven or overlooked on economic grounds.
• Press politicians to amend and change international trade treaties. Despite what they say, if treaties can be made, they can be unmade, revised or replaced.
• Agitate for action on managing the population downwards.
• Rear your own animals, but only if you have the space, time and commitment to care for them properly.

Taking those steps will bring about much more meaningful improvements in animal welfare — plus the environment, society and ourselves — than a feel-good British ban on intensive chicken farming will ever achieve.

If we remove or lessen the problems that intensive agriculture is intended to overcome, then we also remove some of the unpalatable solutions.