07 January, 2008

The Big Food Fight C4

No doubt you've seen the ads on TV (Hugh, Gordon and Jamie running through some woods), well, here we go, Channel 4's "The Big Food Fight" all starts tonight with part one of a three-part documentary called "Hugh's Chicken Run" showing what happened when Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall *attempted* to investigate the intensive poultry farming industry (basically the door was slammed in his face), forcing the producers to go through the process of setting up their own (with Hugh at the helm)...quite how he copes with this (following his idillic time at River Cottage) remains to be seen, but I suspect it's going to be an extremely messy (and disturbing) ride designed to further shame the supermarkets into buying proper free-range stocks instead of 2p or 3p-per-carcas genetic freaks...

Good.

Also on the agenda is to get all products that contain egg (like mayo) to display the source of it clearly on the package, at the moment Hellmann's apparently uses battery eggs (update - whoops -sorry NFU-that should be "intensively farmed eggs"), even though it is a premium product, I have to say that suprised me a little...and they are obviously serious about it too, Jamie Oliver today firmly bit the hand that feeds him by slamming Sainsbury's for not turning up to a public debate on the subject he had organised...again good...his shows follow Hugh's on the 11th of January...

Looks like something might be about to happen about battery farming as finally the pressure is being brought to bear in the right place (i.e. not the farmers), just a shame it's taken so long, and so many other fearful documentaries (and RSPCA investigations) that have been largely ignored by the public in favour of cheap meat (I'm guilty here too, free range prices do make me think twice before choosing quality and cruelty-free chicken for my table) but if the basic benchmark for "acceptable" levels of cruelty in husbandry could be raised a just a little then buying premium meat won't be the *only* option...

On a less sticky note, Gordon Ramsay is going to be running some "how to cook" webinars to get your skills up to scratch followed by a one-hour long one-off live show (on the 18th of January) called "Cookalong live" where you literally cook alongside the master in real-time to create a 3 course meal...!

It's all terribly exciting, so well done (albeit a little prematurely) Channel 4...sounds fantastic! ;)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

take it you didn't read Clarkson's comments in The Sun on Saturday. he was also giving his unique reveiw about this,

Unknown said...

Hehe, I think Clarkson should stick to cars, he rather embarrassed himself over the ID Theft issue... ;)

Anonymous said...

Actually yes this is all for the good C4 Good Job