A chicken can survive without its head for several hours although its body has no idea of where it’s going, hence the phrase “running around like a headless chicken” is used to describe a state of confusion. Sometimes as a consumer it can seem like we are in a similar situation when it comes to choosing the chicken we want for dinner.
In Sweden we consume 125,000 metric tons of chicken a year, with 60% of that being produced within the country. The various Swedish chicken producers are responsible for the lives of 73 million chickens destined for a stew, curry or nuggets and another 5 million hens that are producing those eggs for your Sunday morning omelette. That’s a fair amount of chickens, but just how many of these are living what we could call a “happy life”?
Personally I have always believed that a happy chicken would be one running around outside, pecking at the ground, eating insects, grains and generally behaving like a chicken, not one that’s stuck inside with hundreds of other chickens being fed on a diet of hormones and antibioticsand gaining weight so fast its legs give way. 99.5% of our chickens have the latter lifestyle.
To me a free range organic chicken tastes far superior to that of the factory farmed steroid filled bird, but a discussion with a major chicken producer lead to him telling me the chickens that are allowed outside in Sweden get too stressed and the meat does not taste good. I was told his chickens were “free range indoors”. Now that’s a oxymoron, as for me free range means that the animal has complete free range of its environment and has access to the outdoors. “Free range indoors”, that’s like a vegetarian who eats meat.
This intrigued me into looking further into just what’s on our shelves and what the rules are:
Sweden has some of the strictest regulations in the EU. There is no current EU wide legislation to protect the welfare of broiler birds (chickens destined to be eaten) but in the 90’s, Sweden outlawed the use of small cages and started using several alternative housing systems for egg laying.
Only Sweden and Denmark have installed legal limits on the stocking densities of the birds being raised for slaughter.
Sweden was also the first EU country to ban the use of battery cages for laying hens several years ago and is the only country in the world which rewards poultry farmers on the basis of effort and classification results. battery cages were very tight cramped cages where the laying hen was locked up without the ability to turn in its cage in order to maximize laying potential, but the practice is unfortunately still widespread across Europe (Spain’s eggs are still 100% produced in this way) . In Sweden this change was mainly due to the pressure of 4 major supermarkets who took the approach of wanting to remove all battery produced eggs from their shelves. So the producers had to change their methods to follow suit. Currently in Sweden: 10% of eggs are certified organic with density of 6m2, 57.2% are from single/multi tiered indoor systems density of 9/20 hen’s m2 and 35.9 % have furnished/enriched cages with a density 10m2.
From these facts it shows that Sweden stands head and shoulders above the rest of the EU in terms of its welfare for the humble chicken but the term “free range “can be applied to any chicken that does not live inside cages but it can be housed indoors without having any access to the outdoor world and the feed can still contain antibiotics and hormones to help increase the growth of the chicken.
Here in Sweden the only true assertion that the chicken has led a free range life is the KRAV label.
This is a sign that the chicken meets certain criteria to achieve organic status: no artificial additives, hormones or antibiotics are to be present in the feed, a certain percentage of the animals life is to be spent outdoors having access to the outside during spring, summer and autumn, fast growing breeds designed for maximum growth are not permitted, the production of the chicken must have 25% lower C02 emissions than a non organic product, a maximum density is allowed of 6 hens per m2 (if the chicken house was built after august 1999, 7 m2 if built before) and the slaughter methods must meet certain strict regulations to keep the stress levels down. The entire list has many other criteria and although it can be demanding for producers to meet them, it is reassuring for the consumer knowing what the stamp stands for.
A major influence upon choosing organic can be price. Making the choice of organic can often be up to 3 times more costly than a non organic equivalent.
This is due to several factors;, the raising of the livestock is considerably more expensive due to the feed and space required, the market is much smaller and the individual production cost of something mass produced is always much cheaper.
Personally I prefer to pay more for a superior tasting ingredient and have less of it rather than having lots of a cheap ingredient and sacrificing the taste.
In our modern living most people eat some sort of meat product every day. Meat is a standard consumable (for those that eat it) yet back in my Grandparents’ generation they only ate meat once or twice a week, and it was a big affair when they did so. Meat was expensive and when you had it you appreciated it, it’s not to say that the meat was of any better quality than now but when you have something every day you fail to appreciate its value. Our demand towards having cheaper more available meat has led to the quality of meat being driven down in exchange for quantity and value.
That’s not a good situation to be in. Most people can tell the difference between a good piece of beef and a not so good one. But that’s a lot harder when it comes to chickens, numerous taste tests have been carried out, organic versus non organic and there is a mixed catalogue of results. It is possible that we have become so adjusted to the taste of commercially produced chicken that the firmer texture and gamier taste of a truly natural bird is somewhat foreign to our taste buds.
I always have a simple rule when it comes to choosing vegetables, “they should smell like their name”, i.e. a tomato should actually smell like a tomato rather than some faint watery smell. I often get strange looks in the supermarkets, as I am normally smelling all the produce but only the ones that pass my test make it to my basket, sure I pay a little extra but the taste makes up for it and I have to use a lot less.
The same should go for chickens, at least in sense of taste (it is hard to smell a portioned chicken in the supermarket without looking very strange); a chicken should taste like chicken and not just a bland feel of muscle tissue in your mouth with a faint meaty taste. We should sacrifice our habit of eating chicken as much as we do in exchange for choosing a quality raised chicken of greater taste once a week. For those that are a bit braver in the kitchen getting a whole bird from a respectable grower can be even more rewarding. It’s pretty astounding how many meals you can make out of a single chicken and using the whole bird teaches you to respect what you are eating even more.
In Sweden the majority of consumers are fully aware of the organic market and this shows in the fact that Grona Konsum has the largest share of organic foods of any supermarket chain in Europe.
Bosarpkyckling is the only Swedish producer of fully organic chicken in Skane; their product is available in several coop-Konsum stores, ICA supermarkets and restaurant menus. Bosarpkyckling have strong ideals in the raising of chickens believing that a chicken should live a “happy life” and follow the strict demands to meet the KRAV standards. Yet they still only account for a small percentage of all chickens sold; a meager 360,000 chickens per year, that’s only 0.5% of our total chicken consumption.
Kronfagel is Sweden’s largest producer of chicken products, accounting for 50% of the market so the majority of chicken you find is from this supplier. This chicken is tasty, I used it many times before I was fully aware of the labeling and compared to other European countries producers, its chickens have been raised in higher standards. Yet it was with a representative of this company that I spoke to at the Alska Mat food festival back last autumn. I was told about the stressed out chickens that didn’t want to live outside and the “free range indoors chickens”. It was this discussion that caused me to investigate these claims even further:
According to Dr Oddvar Fossum there are many problems with free range chickens: more bacterial infections, more parasites, and the birds are more likely to become victims of pecking, this occurs within large flocks of birds where the sight of blood can spark a fury of cannibalistic tendencies.
The Flock size may be the cause of the problem as free range flocks can be up to 35, 000 birds but when only 10 birds are together in cages it occurs less frequently .
Dr Fossum goes on to say that the breed of bird is not ready for the switch to a free range organic life, the bird we use is specifically bred for maximum growth and life indoors and not the free range lifestyle of a bird in idyllic farm based movies. However through a combination of vaccines, breeding and even dimming the lights (which reduces violent behavior) he believes it may be possible to reduce all of these negative effects.
Dr Rob Porter of Minnesota University states that Studies have failed to find difference in stress hormone levels between chickens that are raised one way or another and that free range eggs and meat are virtually nutrionally identical to the same products from caged chickens.
He goes on to say that,
“One of the largest attractions of free range chickens is that it makes people happy to think about chickens outside pecking at the soil” and “The perception of the general public is that these outdoor chickens must be healthier than others but time and time again this is shown not to be true ”
One of Dr Fossums points about the breed of chicken we use, is that it is far removed from the chicken our ancestors once knew and is instead a hybrid bred to maximize its growth in as short a period of time as possible, the average time for a chicken to be ready for slaughter has halved since the 1960’s and grows massively bigger than its body can support, this leads to many complications in the birds health hence the required use of antibiotics and hormones.
However there is a breed here in Sweden that would do well. It is the Swedish flower hen or blommehon. There are around half a million of these beautiful birds happily oblivious to the plight of their cousins, clucking and pecking around the dirt in small farms throughout Sweden acting naturally like a chicken, and it’s no wonder, as these are the largest breed of hens native to Sweden. A product of a mix of primitive breeds brought to Sweden hundreds of years ago by settlers and conquerors, they are active in foraging and well adapted to the colder temperatures of Sweden. This makes a perfect free range organic bird and it does certainly not get stressed out by being outdoors, quite the opposite... Birds like these are more ideally suited to our environment; it’s what they are meant to live like. It would certainly make sense for us to switch to using these types of birds in an organic setting rather than the birds which are used to being indoors. Right now it is only a handful of small farms that are using these chickens but gradually awareness is increasing.
Overall I myself have discovered a lot about the state of our feathered friends here in Sweden. After being frustrated at being told chickens get stressed out being outdoors I have realized that it did make me happier to think about chickens running around outside, but I also realise now that there is a lot of other factors involved in making the chickens happy rather than just simply opening the barn door.
The KRAV labelling is a great benchmark in standards and its coveted label signifies a product worthy of organic status. We can be sure when we choose a KRAV labelled product that the product really has had as close to a natural life and unstressfull death as possible, a true free range life, but still only 1 person in every 200 is making that choice when it comes to your dinner.
Overall the Swedish laws governing the raising of chickens are of extremely high standards and something to be proud of amongst the rest of Europe. If you are not going to choose organic then choosing a Swedish product is the better choice, as well as supporting your own country you can be sure that the bird’s standard of life was far superior to that of imported chickens.
It is a long hard road to change our eating habits but organic consumption is on the rise and is growing overall by 25% every year in Sweden so we are walking down the right road. As a consumer we have great influence over what’s on our shelves... If enough of us demand it, the supermarkets will stock more of it.
we can help speed up this journey by each one of us starting to question what it is we are eating and what it is we should really be tasting.
References:
www.thepoultysite.com
www.slideserve.com/presentation/76606
www.krav.se
