We have a wilful blindness when it comes to meat farming. The less we know, the easier it is to enjoy that really cheap chicken burger.
Up until now I have been living in a blissful world, where organically farmed chickens actually walked around on the farm, rolled in the sun, and spent time with their families. I don’t know what I thought would happen when their time came to die. Maybe they would be put to sleep? Maybe they got old and fell over?
As for cheaper, battery-farmed chickens – well, it was a little bit darker and a little more cramped but essentially OK, right?
Wrong.
For the Love of Meat, a new Australian documentary series, pulls back the curtain on how animal products get from the farm to our plates.
The show is created by the Tasmanian foodie and former Fairfax restaurant critic Matthew Evans, and the co-writer, director, and producer Stephen Oliver. This is the second time the duo have taken a deep dive into Australia’s meat-eating habits, and it ain’t always pretty.
Their first documentary, What’s the Catch, screened on SBS in 2014 and examined issues in the fishing industry, including overfishing and disruption to the marine supply chain. It was a powerful series that inspired me to change my consumption habits: never again did I order prawns on pizza.
So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to watch the next instalment. I love chicken. So do many other Australians. Is Evans going to ruin the Sunday roast and the Zinger burger in one fell swoop?
“Worldwide, we consume on average 34 kilos of meat per year,” says Evans. “But in Australia the shocking statistic is that we eat a whopping 90 kilos per person per year.”
This is actually kind of gross when you think about it.
And the meat we love the most? Chicken. We each eat 42kg of chicken a year – 10 times more than we did 50 years ago.
Raised conventionally, chicken’s lives are – to paraphrase Hobbes – poor, nasty, brutish and short. Most broiler chooks aren’t even kept in cages. They’re fattened up in huge sheds where they go from egg to slaughter in a mere 35 days.
Only 1% of chickens sold in Australia are organic. Evans explains what labelling such as “organic”, “RSPCA approved” and “free range” actually means. How much room do the chickens get? Do they get to sleep or go outside? What are they eating? How long do they live?
He takes us to an organic farm and a free range farm. In an organic farm, chickens are given higher quality feed and more room to roam around. In the free range farm, the chickens are allowed outside and given space to move for a certain amount of hours each day. At an RSPCA-approved farm, the conditions for chickens look quite cramped, but they are still given more room than usual to roam; they’re also kept warm, and are allowed to sleep each night.
Farm footage can be confronting, even when they’re operating with more humane standards. For instance, we learn how chickens are killed in an organic farm: they are placed upside down, which is apparently calming, then immersed in a bath of electrified water before their throats are slit.
We don’t get to see how battery or broiler hens are farmed; Evans repeatedly sought access but was denied. The obvious question is: what do these farms have to hide?
It’s confronting subject matter, but I like Evans as a presenter: he’s knowledgeable, low-key and gets his message across without hyperbole. And once again, this important series has me thinking seriously about my consumption habits.
I won’t be giving up meat (Evans, who owns his own pig farm, isn’t trying to convince us to), but when he finally takes us to a commercial, free-range farm – one where chickens are allowed outside – it’s easy to decide what kind of chicken I’ll be buying the next time I go to the supermarket.
Parts two and three of the series focus on pork and beef, and are sure to be just as bracing.
• For the Love of Meat with Matthew Evans continues on Thursday 27 October at 7.30pm on SBS
