On first glance, you might think it’s just price, but as you delve down into the layers that surround chicken, and all the food we eat, especially that which is grown commercially, there is a lot more to it than money.
Why Organic Chicken costs more and why it has better taste, health benefits, chicken welfare and a lower impact on the planet.
Firstly, cheap chicken for broilers (chicken for eating as opposed to egg laying), those which cost less than £5 for a whole bird, are a particular kind scientifically bred to grow quickly over a short time. This often means that these chickens can barely walk as their bulky breasts grow quicker than their little legs. They are housed in high numbers, densely packed into a small space. The food they eat may be genetically modified and is often from soy which could have been grown on land which once grew ancient rainforests. These chickens have a life cycle of around 5-6 weeks. As one of the animal welfare scientists mentions in the podcast below, the life of an intensely reared broiler chicken is not one that she would be particuarly like to experience. Even a free range corn-fed chicken doesn’t have the most pleasant life when grown for speed.
Hugh Grierson’s organic free-range chickens from Perthshire are now listed on the Food Hub. There are no locally reared organical broilers that we know of in Dumfries and Galloway. We are pleased to be stocking this chicken for our customers as it is better for people, animals and planet because:
- They are a slower growing breed which lives for at least 70 days minimum. Giving heavier birds, around 1.9+kg, usually 500g more than a cheap chicken.
- These birds live in smaller flock sizes of hundreds rather than thousands and get to form a pecking order apparently 😉 so they live more naturally.
- They are slaughtered on site once a week by staff who are fairly paid and have lots of other meaningful work.
- The meat is more flavourful as they have not been fed solely on artificial food and graze naturally in fields. Grierson’s grow a wheat – pea mix on their farm to feed chickens a healthy high protein diet.
- Their birds are not injected with water to plump them up.
- Smaller flock sizes mean less chicken waste on the ground and going into the rivers. Rearing chickens in any sizeable scale is not the greatest for ground water.
We are not saying that organic chicken is the perfect protein source for everyone, and the planet, but it is a good option for those who want to occasionally eat chicken meat with a lower carbon footprint and higher animal welfare and to avoid the larger scale damage of cheap chicken production. Eating less but better meat is good compromise for the environmentally conscious.
For more information from the farmer got to Hugh Grierson
If you’d like to know more about the world of chicken reared for meat and love a good podcast, give this one a listen to from Chris Van Tulleken, it’s called Fed – Planet Chicken
To shop for organic chicken and more go to our shop
