Ethical Food

Chicken Out wins top award

The Chicken Out! website has won the award for Best Use of Interactive in this year’s Broadcast Digital Awards. www.chickenout.tv
website was recognised for “outstanding ability to enhance the viewing experience and become a key element of a TV programme’s success.”

Now, with over 160,000 Chicken Out! supporters backing our campaign for a free-range future and over 250 MPs lending parliamentary support, we are urging the UK government to introduce legislation that improves the lives of millions of chickens.


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Last night More4 showed pig business, a powerful film about the pig industry. The intensive farming methods used in the rest of the world that are no longer legal here are horrible. The animals live in terrible conditions, undermine small farmers and pollute the environment. The lagoons of manure may be responsible forswine flu , and cause poor health for those that live in the area.
Smithfield is the corporation featuring in the film, and is the owner of a massive pig farm in Perote, Mexico, near the village of La Gloria, where the earliest cases of the new H1N1 flu were detected. The virus may have been caused in part by the conditions under which the farm operates, which the petition terms "horrifically unsanitary."

"One-third of the world’s total cultivable land is dedicated to growing cereal and soya to feed livestock, while a further 7% is used for grazing animals. Eighty per cent of the world's soya beans and 60% of its maize and barley are grown for livestock feed. Much of this land is acquired by destroying forests, a major cause of CO2 emissions and loss of biodiversity. Between 2004 and 2005 around 1.2 million hectares of rainforest were cut down as a result of soya expansion, almost entirely for animal feed and livestock pastures."

The film was supposed to premiere in the UK in February but the screening was canceled due to fears of legal action from Smithfield. Robert Kennedy Jr. makes an appearance, speaking out against the dangers of intensive pig farming.

Eco-campaigner Tracy Worcester, a former actress and now Marchioness of Worcester, has campaigned for years for quality food, animal welfare and environmental protection through a revitalisation of rural economies. Pig Business is her four year exploration of intensive pig farming.

newscientist on flu
channel4
Cesspools of Shame
Watch the film here