As seems to be the case these days, I found myself watching another Channel 4 documentary this evening. I wonder if I should rename the blog 'Stuff and Nonsense and Channel 4 Programming', seeing as it's pretty much all I've written about thusfar. I'll have to rectify that, I guess.

It seems that floppy-haired foppish TV chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, is on a drive to get people to stop eating battery-farmed chicken, and to have everyone eating Free Range chucks. Tonight's program is the first of a two-parter entitled 'Hugh's Chicken Run', which is part of a larger food-based mini-series called 'The Big Food Fight'.

Clearly, no barn-rearing operation would be suicidal enough to allow Hugh to film their sheds to illustrate how awful a farmed chicken's life is, so - he created his own.

Hugh's show appears to be 2008's socially-conscious food program - just like Jamie Oliver's efforts last year (or was it 2006?) with revamping school dinners. There's one problem for me with this though - Jamie's 'School Dinners' worked because Jamie proved that you could serve up healthy, nutritious meals for children for the same price as turkey twizzlers. Free-range chicken is not the same price as barn-reared chicken.

Barn-farmed chicken is chicken production maximised in every possible way. Every way, that is, except for the quality of life of the chicken. Because barn-farmed chicken is so optimized to the nth degree, it's several magnitudes cheaper for a farmer to produce 4000 barn-farmed chicken than 4000 free-range ones. Free-range chicken need bales of hay, toys (no, really! Whittingstall had them playing with footballs and CDs!), open spaces, places in which to roost and they obviously need more attention from a keeper. The barn animals merely require their automatic feeders topping up with feed, and the removal and euthanasia of underweight or ill birds every day.

I just checked at Tesco.com - a 1.4kg barn-farmed chicken costs £3 (or, 2 for a fiver! It's a bargain!), and a 1.3kg (closest size I could get) free-range one stacks up at £4.80. So, with Tesco's current 2 for £5 deal, it makes free-range chicken almost double the price of regular chicken. I'm sorry Hugh, but I can't see the nation buying into this one.

Farming is a very old branch of the game called 'Business'. In the 'Business' game the object of the game is to make as much money as possible. Farmers get squeezed by the supermarket giants to produce their wares at the keenest prices possible, so that the fluffy, friendly supermarkets can pass on that price-saving to consumers. Because of this pressure applied by the supermarkets, farmers have to get the calculators out to work out how they can make more money - hence barn-reared chickens.

Of course, Hugh's quite right to go after the supermarkets - evil mega-corporations that they are - but how do you make free-range farming become the norm when it costs twice the amount of barn-reared produce?

The economically naive could say "Tescos (et al) could drop their prices of free-range chicken", and, sure, that'd be a great solution - but it's about as likely as a snowman on the surface of the sun. Tescos play this "business" game too, and by heck, they're fucking good at it, and they're not likely to idly toss a bucket of cash away just because some ethically-aware Channel 4 foodies are knocking on their doors.

I'll have to catch part 2 tomorrow, after the 1st leg of the Carling Cup semis. Spurs vs the scum at Cashburden Grave. With three quarters of our defence still in the physio's room and our previous record against those wankers, I don't hold out much hope. I just hope it isn't a re-run of last year's Carling Cup semi-final, where we took a 2-0 lead at home, went for a burton in the 2nd half and drew 2-2, and then threw the whole fucking lot in the bin in the 2nd leg. Perhaps Juande will work some miracles!

In other news - the incessant pooping stopped yesterday evening. I worked from home today, but I think I'll probably be ok for work tomorrow. Hopefully this is the end of the cold/virus/whatever.