Chicken Out! Campaign
Fearnley-Whittingstall has presented three one-hour shows detailing how commercial breeds of broiler chickens are reared for their meat in just 39 days. This compares to slow growing breeds which live for at least 75 days in more humane and natural surroundings. Fearnley-Whittingstall is currently trying to encourage people to become more aware of food production issues through his "Chicken Out" campaign.
As part of the campaign, Fearnley-Whittingstall singled out Tesco as a major retailer of chickens which failed to conform to the standards laid down by the Farm Animal Welfare Council in its "Five Freedoms" concept. As a result, he purchased a share in Tesco so that he could take advantage of a procedure set out in section 338 Companies Act 2006, which entitles any shareholder of a company to table a resolution at a general meeting of a company provided he can garner a certain level of support from other shareholders. Fearnley-Whittingstall managed to find sufficient shareholders to support the tabling of a resolution at Tesco's AGM on 27 June 2008, which, if passed, would have committed Tesco, within a reasonable timeframe, to take appropriate measures to ensure that chickens purchased for sale were produced in systems capable of providing the "Five Freedoms". An insufficient number of shareholders voted in favour of the resolution for it to be passed.
In an interview in January 2008, Fearnley-Whittingstall extended the call to hospitality and food service operators:
It's one thing to challenge individual consumers to give up intensively reared chicken but it's also an issue where anyone in the business of selling chicken has to take a stand... in some cases I know chefs, not naming names, at the very high-end sector who are not using free-range birds. Some of them are on the road to Michelin stars.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Famous quotes containing the word campaign:
“The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)