November 26th 2007
UK Celebrity Chefs To Go After Cruel Chicken Farms
Oliver, Ramsay, and Fearnley-Whittingstall join forces
Filed under: animals, food & drink — michael @ 4:45 pm
Setting aside any cooking differences, the top three chefs in the UK (otherwise known as the culinary “three tenors”) have created a united front to expose cruel chicken farming practices and encourage consumers to make smart choices. Jaime Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will all promote organic, free range meat through January on UK’s Channel 4. From the article,
“Oliver will reveal to his guests some of the “hideous” ways chicken-related dishes make their way from farm to fork through a series of “shocking demonstrations”. To show the public “what happens to chickens that are sold for less than the price of a pint of beer”, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will set up his own intensive-rearing chicken farm near his home in Axminster, Devon. He will be shown breaking down in tears at the plight of the unnaturally large 39-day-old broiler chicks, crying: “I can’t kill another chicken.”
What about Ramsay? Well, as far as we can tell, he’ll be the host of a “Cook-Along” live special to encourage everyone to get into the kitchen at the same time. We’re sure there will be some organic promotions during this time — but it doesn’t appear as if the controversial chef will be doing nearly as much as Oliver or Whittingstall. As we’ve mentioned before, Ramsay has irked animal rights groups such as PETA for his use of certain animals in the kitchen; especially horse meat and duck liver. Let’s hope his efforts are as genuine as the others.
via the guardian
[...] SOURCE [...]
The factory farming of any animals, especially chickens, is cruel and destructive to the environment. And with poultry animals like chickens, turkeys and ducks, factory farming increases the risk of the spread of bird flu, which could potentially kill millions of people, so if more chefs took a stand and stopped using factory farmed chicken, pork, milk, eggs, foie gras, and others, it could have a huge impact. They should also promote eating less meat generally. Some chefs are encouraging others to use meat more as a flavoring and not the main part of a dish, which is progress.
I’d like to see more vegan/vegetarian celebrity chefs. Vegan chef Isa Moskowitz of the Vegan Post Punk Kitchen is pretty cool:
http://www.theppk.com/
[...] has previously sparked flames with PETA is not really doing anything to help the cause that I (or other writers for that matter) can see. His way of encouraging consumers to make smart choices, and buy organic and free range? [...]
[...] can read more about the effort in a past post here.To put aside any differences, the three were sent into the woods to perform some team building [...]
[...] of celebrity chefs were sick of all the piss poor conditions that most chickens are forced to endure. So, they decided to go [...]