BBC 3 is showing the final episode of their Blood Sweat and Takeaways documentary series tonight at 9pm. This series follows a plucky group of British volunteers discovering first hand the human cost involved in the production of some of the most popular takeaway ingredients. Tonight the focus is on Thailand's chicken industry, much of which ends up in food in Britain, despite us having a fully developed British chicken industry.
The programme is sure to build on what the earlier programmes have convincingly demonstrated: that we are not paying a fair price for our food, and that it has become so cheap that a) we are eating too much and b) wasting too much (around a third of the food we buy is wasted – source www.lovefoodhatewaste.com).
All the sentiments highlighted in these programmes are very strongly felt by husband and wife team, Steve and Sarah Rushton. So much so that they sold their two thriving dining pubs in the West Country specialising in simple, local food (and voted Archant's Devon Life Dining pub of the Year 2005) and invested everything in Scoff, a radical new, ethical takeaway/home delivery business, in order to demonstrably do something more about this issue.
Sarah Rushton commented "We wanted to make better food more accessible so decided to take our honest, home cooked grub prepared with the best local ingredients out of the gastro pub niche. We came back to London and launched it in the wider takeaway and home delivery market. Our food is the embodiment of real food with all our meat sourced directly from small, traditional farmers doing things properly and with whom we have had a relationship for a number of years. For example, we only use free range chicken from Creedy Carver in Devon. These ingredients have never before been found on a takeaway menu but place an order with Scoff and within the hour you could be tucking into a free range chicken and ham pie or superb coq au vin in the comfort of your own home. This is such a stride forward from the normal, poor quality options available when you want a night in."
Tonight's programme will highlight the very bottom end of global chicken production but we also have our own British intensively farmed chicken industry which has received a lot of coverage through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Out! campaign.
Information from the Compassion in World Farming organisation tells us British consumers increasingly want their food to be healthier and more ethical, as well as tasting good. Sales of higher welfare chicken rose by 42% between December 2007 and December 2008, with a decrease in sales of standard chicken in the same period. Many consumers are also beginning to understand that because free-range chickens live healthier lives, they are healthier to eat. Free-range chicken meat contains less fat, more protein and more Omega-3 than intensively-farmed chicken meat.
Sarah Rushton adds "Here at Scoff we are in no doubt that
free-range chicken is the healthiest and most sustainable way forward. Our service means that the growing number of people who do care about what they eat no longer have to compromise when they want to enjoy a bit of convenience. We have truly taken the junk food out of the takeaway."
