Free range chicken isn't healthier or more sustainable. It's just tastes better and costs more.

I'm prepared to accept that free range chickens taste better. I also know that the way those chickens are bred means they cost a whole lot more than the chickens produced in batteries or other intensive farming methods. But this argument is wrong:

Despite the fact that sustainable poultry production systems deliver huge benefits to the environment and public health, the producers using these methods have no option but to compete on an unlevel playing field. Worse, we are paying for the damage caused by industrial food production in hidden ways, through taxes, in the form of misdirected subsidies from the common agricultural policy, through water pollution clean-up costs and through national health service treatment costs.

Firstly there's no evidence that intensive farming is more damaging to the environment than traditional or organic methods. In fact the reverse is true - traditional and organic methods are less environmentally-friendly:

Agricultural economists at UC Davis, for instance, analyzed farm-level surveys from 1996-2000 and concluded that there are “significant” scale economies in modern agriculture and that small farms are “high cost” operations. Absent the efficiencies of large farms, the use of polluting inputs would rise, as would food production costs, which would lead to more expensive food.

So far from there being an environmental benefit from moving away from agricultural intensification, the reverse is true - if we want a less polluting agriculture then intensification is the right choice. This is quite simply because that supposedly "sustainable" system is less efficient. We get expensive food and a more damaged environment.

The public health issues are equally misplaced. There is no evidence at all that organic methods are healthier than methods using modern pest control or fertilisers. - it's just that all those healthy looking chickens scuttling about in feels give us the impression that eating them will be healthier.

So when the Sustainable Food Trust tell you their methods are healthier and have less environmental impact they aren't telling you the whole truth. And, when they call for the system to be skewed to support their methods, what they are doing is making you pay more for food with the only benefit going to the organic farmers' bank balances.

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The Giant Malaysian Killer Chicken - story and the limits of skepticism

Readers may not be aware but Bolton Abbey – more specifically Strid Wood - is the last known habitat of the Giant Malaysian Killer Chicken (you may glimpse it in the picture above if you look carefully). It has been a few years since the last sighting of this elusive avian; indeed some suggest that the Killer Chicken is an invention, an artifice created merely to annoy a small child.

What is important though isn’t the provenance of the bird in question – after all you have to do something to occupy the minds of seven-year-olds who reject the concept of walking, even walking through a glorious English wood. Rather, it is the importance of stories – even stories that the intended target (the seven-year-old) wishes you’d shut up about.

I remember once being told – by a scientist no less – that fiction was a waste of time. Even more that it led to people getting the wrong idea. And, as is so often the case with such sceptical folk, this scientist cited creation stories – or “creationism” as he preferred to call it. Apparently, by teaching these stories to children, we are corrupting them and turning them into anti-science religious maniacs (I exaggerate but only slightly).

Such people struggle – for reasons that escape me – with the ideas that there is more to truth than scientific fact and that stories, even weird creation stories, have a valid truth in them. This one – from Assyrian mythology – is among my favourites since it involves the slaying of a dragon:

So were the enemies of the high gods overthrown by the Avenger. Ansar's commands were fulfilled and the desires of Ea fully accomplished. Merodach strengthened the bonds which he had laid upon the evil gods and then returned to Tiamat. He leapt upon the dragon's body; he clove her skull with his great club; he opened the channels of her blood which streamed forth, and caused the north to carry her blood to hidden places. The high gods, his fathers, clustered around; they raised shouts of triumph and made merry. Then they brought gifts and offerings to the great Avenger.

Merodach rested a while, gazing upon the dead body of the dragon. He divided the flesh of Ku-pu, and devised a cunning plan.

Then the lord of the high gods split the body of the dragon like that of a mashde fish into two halves. With one half he enveloped the firmament; he fixed it there and set a watchman to prevent the waters falling down.  With the other half he made the earth. Then he made the abode of Ea in the deep, and the abode of Anu in high heaven. The abode of Enlil was in the air.

The point of these stories is not merely to explain how the world came to be or even to describe mankind’s role in that world. Rather the story more often seeks to explain how “good” and “evil” interact and how we, as men, are corrupted. So the core of creation stories define a morality – whether this one in which Tiamet, the dragon slain to make the word, has aspects of good (the world’s creatrix) and evil (the serpent) or those we are more familiar with such as the Adam and Eve story.

Fiction - the making up of stories – is important if we are to allow our morals, what we see as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, to be understood. We know that the setting down of rules – the lawyers’ obsessiveness that gave us Leviticus and the accountants’ passion that brought Numbers – do not define our moral purpose or even, in that phrase of Mums everywhere, the difference between right and wrong.

The skeptic rejects story – This goes in part to explain the dry dullness of his chosen belief system – preferring instead the idea (a delightfully fictional idea) that truth and understanding derive from a thing called “empirical enquiry” and from that enquiry alone.

Skepticism ... is an approach to claims akin to the scientific method. It is a powerful and positive methodology (a collection of methods of inquiry) that is used to evaluate claims and make decisions. It is used to search for the (provisional) truth in matters and to make decisions that are based on sound reasoning, logic, and evidence. Skepticism is based on a simple method: doubt and inquiry. The idea is to neither initially accept claims nor dismiss them; it’s about questioning them and testing them for validity. Only after inquiry does a skeptic take a stance on an issue.

I see no place in this for story, for wonderment or for the learning that comes from telling an intelligent seven-year-old that Strid Wood is the habitat of a giant killer chicken. Some will observe the contradiction between arriving at a ‘stance on an issue’ through reasoning and through ‘doubt and inquiry’, via scientific method. But that would be to play games of logic with the core belief of a faith – in this case ‘skepticism’.

Story-making and story-telling must be central to our culture, to deny fiction is to deny an essential element of humanity. To characterise stories as ‘childish’ or ‘misleading’ is to misunderstand the power of those stories, the manner in which speculation, creation and change is driven by dreams and hopes rather than by the dry exploration of something “akin to the scientific method”.

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It's either incompetence or else they're lying...

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There's a chicken factory - run by an Irish-owned firm called HCF (Poultry) Ltd - in Cullingworth and today it stinks. I mean really stinks - the smell is actively unpleasant, you wouldn't want to spend any time outside near the factory.

In trying to resolve this situation - to provide some relief for the factory's neighbours and in anticipation of the Village Gala tomorrow on the nearby recreation ground - I discovered that not one public authority holds keyholder or management out-of-hours contact details for this plant. Not the Council's environmental health department, not the fire service and not the police.

Not only am I angry about this - what would happen in the case of a fire or a serious break in? What would happen in frustrated and annoyed neighbours decided to take the law into their own hands?

This is either incompetence or they're lying. It's really not good enough.

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Campaign Diary: Mostly chickens

On a sunny but breezy afternoon we went up to Harecroft, a little hamlet between Cullingworth and Wilsden - about 150 electors but mostly good Tories so worth the visit. Lots of friendly folk on the doorstep - plenty of 'come inside, sit down, have a cup of tea' responses (this may have a little to do with the howling gale blowing outside). And much discussion of chickens and not in a good way!

Harecroft features a large chicken factory - a place where, after a brief prayer, a lot of chickens are slaughtered. And it smells. Not all the time but often enough to upset and annoy the locals. Now without boring you all with loads of detail (and we should note that the factory's been there a long time), we should note that the firm running the unit has been prosecuted successfully by the Council at least once. However, the locals - quite understandably - would like it closed, which of course isn't something the Council is able to do (certainly not permanently).

We have the same problem in Cullingworth - I remember being photographed by the local paper gingerly holding a slightly whiffy chicken foot that had fallen from one of the waste wagons. And, since I lived on the street with the factory, I also witnessed the occasional break for freedom - two or three chickens making a run for it down the road!

There isn't a magic solution to these problems - I can't promise anything other than my best efforts to local residents. I am as frustrated as local residents by the seeming inability of environmental health officers to deal with persistent problems be they smells, dust or noise. I understand the limitations of the law but worry that, as with many other areas, there is little the Councillor can do is make a lot of noise, insist on actions being taken and generally getting on the case. None of this is of any comfort the the people whose life is a misery because of noise and dust from Bingley Stone or these poor folk in Harecroft who live sometimes with a permeating stench of rotting chicken.

In times past there was a sub-committee of council concerned with environmental health where these issues could be brought by councillors - or through petitions the public. And this committee had teeth, it could require action of officers, it could insist reports are brought back to a future meeting and could hold those delivering to account. Now we have area committees with no substantive executive powers in these areas, pointless and powerless scrutiny committees and a "portfolio holder", a single councillor, whose deliberation of such matters takes place in private with officers. So much for modern local government!

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Friday Fungus: Making cars from mushrooms

You’ve read that right, folks! Ford are looking at manufacturing car parts from mushrooms – well sort of anyway:

Ford is collaborating with eco start-up Evocative Design in the development of a biodegradable foam made from mushrooms. The fungus-based foam could be used in bumpers, side doors and dashboards. The key ingredient in the manufacturing process is mycelium, the branching fibers of a mushroom’s root system. Evocative Design has developed mycelium into an incredibly strong binding agent that is applied to other organic materials such as corn and oat husks. The organic material is combined with mycelium in trays that serve as the mold for various auto parts. The living mycelium intertwines with the organic material in the molds for five days. Then the forms are heated and dried into sturdy, lightweight automotive components that are also waterproof and fireproof. If the Ford/Evocative Design collaboration takes off, cars of the future could end up in compost heaps instead of landfills.

Brings a whole new world a ‘grow your own’ closer! And, for all those “peak oil” obsessives – this is how the market responds to rising prices. By finding substitutes – like chicken feathers, for example!

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A random chicken for Sunday

Nice chicken here - actually stood still to be snapped! I suspect it was expecting some food-related reward!