This article was the sort that I used to long for constantly. It may have watered down considerably by this stage {along with my juvenile communism} but in younger years I was so fierce an environmentalist that I would have doubtless found Douglas’ new party far too soft-core for my liking.

A notable and substantial remnant from that phase is my vegetarianism, which remains in place because I can not and most likely never will appreciate the distinction in the tolerance of eating a pig but not a severely mentally handicapped human. This is a clear instance of bigotry and tautology such as “But they’re not human” only serves to confirm this.

I never previously attempted to evangelise over this as such efforts tend to end in failure and alienation {I had a hunter friend who has never spoken to me since I put it to him that it was impossible to respect and cherish something while destroying it needlessly}. However in this instance the case is clear: that haughty elitist Monbiot has, once again, peered down to inform us of an awkward home truth. Meat eating is destroying the planet and starving a vast section its greatest species.

I am glad that he managed to restrain himself {with visible effort} from his usual all-out rant aganst bio-fuels {why he imagines that all have tired of them I am not sure, personally I could endure them merrily for decades given his passion, vigour and zeal} and addressed this point.

What I find unfortunate is that he seems to have opted for an extreme. Veganism is nearly impossible to survive on, or at least such a vast amount of effort that it will never be tenable for a mass society shift towards. It is also of questionable ethical superiority given that eggs get laid as surely as menstrual fluids are emitted and are of equal sentience to such releases, albeit superior in a gastronomical sense and rather more solid. Milk is a more tricky one to justify but there could certainly be something ethical arranged there, and indeed would have to be were the meat industry to collapse suddenly owing to a shift towards vegetarianism. Alternatively we could all just drink soya milk, which is lovely.

Although it requires careful planning it is perfectly possible to live a healthy vegetarian diet, with plenty of protein consumed. I am endlessly amused at those that inform all 6′3+ of me that such eating habits stunt your growth, with my general reaction being to glance down and enquire ‘Really?’ Since I’ve been off pork from three of four, red meat since I was six and all meat since seven or so I find the notion of being malnourished rather amusing, more than anything.

The environmental impact being as it is I feel comfortable in reccomending vegetarianism to all two of SES’s readers, not to mention the editors. The damage done to the planet by omnivorous appetites amongst westerners are measurable not only in methane {which can be mitigated by shifting feed} and the vast amount of additional transport required to get grain to animal but also the deforrestation of rainforests and other woodland areas in order to make way for more animals.

This is something which must be amended and no appeals to utilitarianism will suffice. The pleasure which you take from devouring a bacon sandwhich {which, I must pre-emptively assure you, I experience no cravings for} is miniscule compared to the suffering caused by Africans dying for want of grain. Supporting the meat industry is supporting starvation. The unethical nature of the action comes not solely from the funding of an untimely execution of a living, thinking being but also from food required to sustain it throughout its life not reaching a sapient being in need.

Ed Balls has managed to get something right for once. Well, sort of, anyway.

This is an excellent suggestion. Being able to cook is an essential life skill. What are you supposed to eat if you can’t cook a basic meal? Expensive, unhealthy, foul ready-meals are really the only option beyond beans on toast - neither of which are the foundation for a healthy diet. Or, indeed, a healthy wallet.

Now, I think the emphasis is wrong. Balls wants to introduce compulsory lessons in 8 healthy dishes to combat obesity. This strikes me as a poor way to approach the matter. What use is teaching children to cook certain, specific dishes if they don’t understand the fundamental mechanics of cookery? The preparation of food is generally based in a number of universal, essential techniques. Surely it would be better to teach teenagers these techniques rather than specific meals? That would allow them to cook any number of meals, and give them a degree of choice in what they ate.

So, the measure is very much half-arsed. But it’s a step in the right direction. Cooking is as essential a skill as basic mathematics, and should be taught as much as it.

Channel 4 are doing something amazing at the moment. “Celebrity” Big Brother has been bumped to E4, so the January schedules were looking a little thin until some bright spark suggested making some programmes about food and showing them in the same slot every night for a week fortnight. This week was all about how chickens are treated. Next week focuses on health, quality and the like.

Hugh’s Chicken Run

I spent three hours this week watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s programme on chicken. The premise of “Hugh’s Chicken Run” was simple: he would rear two crops of meat chickens in the same shed, split down the middle. One group of chickens was reared within EU standards of meat chicken production, and the other was free range. The difference between the two groups was remarkable. The programme also charted a community project in Axminster where local residents reared some birds on an old allotment, and a campaign to rid Axminster of intensively farmed birds. The mini-series also charted Hugh’s efforts to get supermarkets to agree to speak about bird welfare on camera, and a lot of talk of how “the industry” was trying to make life difficult for him.

I have a huge amount of respect for this kind of programming. It’s fine for us to complain at atrocious animal welfare, but something else to get off our backsides to do something about it. Fearnley-Whittingstall reared two groups of chickens, and the comparison between them was very obvious for all to see. His argument was simple: paying £1 more per chicken is not unreasonable for anyone on any sized budget.

But the mini-series had its failings. Most obviously, it was too long. The premise could have been more effectively condensed to a single show, either an hour or 90 minutes in length. Endless trailing of “still to come” and tiring repeats of clips that were shown in the adverts anyway began to grate. I can understand that after four weeks of killing ill birds every morning would unsettle anyone, and Whittingstall crying made for an emotional piece of television, but I must have seen that scene a dozen times.

My other chief objection is one of personal taste. I found the presenting style too soppy and self-involved. Clearly Whittingstall felt that the chicken industry was crusading against him, that the supermarkets were refusing to engage with him, and that the consumers didn’t feel as passionately as he did about the whole thing. It was evidently an emotionally draining few months for him (the factory chickens being culled just 39 days after hatching), but the programme lost something in the overplaying of emotion. Anyone would be upset at killing off birds because they could not walk because of the conditions you chose to put them in, but by the tenth time I heard “the industry will be all over me” I wanted to tell Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall to get a grip.

Jamie’s Fowl Dinners

Jamie Oliver never ceases to impress. He comes across as a genuine, decent, nice guy. He made the change from celebrity chef to political campaigner overnight, and appears to have found his most natural place on TV. His programme on school dinners shocked the public and changed the law. Parents had no idea what their children were eating in school dinners: having trusted educational authorities to provide nutritious food, they were amazed at the 35 pence-per-person slop their kids were being served. I can still remember the army of dinner-ladies he took on a camp to teach how to cook with fresh produce: these people wanted to cook proper food but were held back.

“Jamie’s Fowl Dinners” is clearly trying to do the same thing for the chicken industry. We consume millions of eggs a day, yet most of us simply do not care where they come from. Supermarkets are competing to force the price of eggs and chickens down, so conditions degenerate. If only people knew what nasty conditions these birds are kept in, surely conditions would change?

The set-up of “Jamie’s Fowl Dinners” was different to any kind of cookery show TV has seen. An audience watched a mixture of short films about a bird’s life, with key moments played out in live action. They then watched Oliver prepare chicken and egg meals, and ate his cuisine. Needless to say, most renounced their love-affair with the cheep chicken (forgive the pun).

Jamie Oliver succeeded in a way Fearnley-Whittingstall could not: he appeared to divorce himself from the reality of what he was doing, totally lacking emotion at any stage of the process. He passionlessly produced his slaughterman’s licence and slit a chicken’s mouth. Don’t misunderstand me: his words were heartfelt and his voice emphatic, but the whole programme had a different tone to Whittingstall’s. Whittingstall seemed to want to be a persecuted campaigner; Oliver seemed to want to persuade people of his point of view.

The programme was educational. Seeing the actual “egg products” that are listed on processed food boxes was more stomach-turning than the chicken-killing. Watching hour-old chicks being sorted between female egg-layers and male duds was concerning: watching the males gassed with CO2 was upsetting. “This happens with all chicks, battery farm or free range”, we were reminded.

Jamie Oliver’s programme had a clear purpose, a clear argument to put forward. I suspect it will be criticised in many corners for being one-sided and partial. This is unjust. The programme had a clear editorial bias: so clear that it is difficult to see how one could be unknowingly influenced by it. Many of his guests remained adamant that they would continue to eat fast-food and cut-price fresh chicken. Many viewers will conduct their weekly shops this weekend and will stock up on cheap bird parts. But many will have been surprised by what they saw, and will change their shopping habits.

This programme sought to change people’s shopping habits. But the methods employed were those of education, not half-truth; fact, not deception. The supermarkets would rather you don’t think about where your food comes from. Really, they are to blame for all this. If I were a supermarket, I would not stock battery-farm eggs or anything sub-free range. Prices would rise, and the market would see some of my custom disappear. Sometimes ethics come above profit.

Jamie Oliver and I take the same view of chicken. We both cook it, we both eat it. But we both think the birds should be treated well during life, and should be killed humanely. The cut-price chicken industry ignores these two crucial aspects of food production, and it is a huge failing. Ask a supermarket why they stock cut-price chicken and they will point out that the public buys it. The farmers get only 3 pence per factory chicken retailing at £3. If the public is to be held responsible for the food it eats, the supermarkets have a right to show the consumer how it is grown. This programme did that. If the consumer continues to buy rubbish chicken, so be it. If they are educated, at least they can take the active decision not to care.