Jamie Oliver kills a chicken on TV

LAST Friday, in front of 4 million television viewers and a studio audience, the chef Jamie Oliver killed a chicken. Having recently obtained a United Kingdom slaughterman’s license, Mr. Oliver staged a “gala dinner,” in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken.

“A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn’t expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub,” he said Monday in an interview.

“It only costs a bit more to give a chicken a natural life and a reasonably pleasant death,” he told the champagne-sipping audience before he stunned the chicken, cut an artery inside its throat, and let it bleed to death, all in accordance with British standards for humane slaughter.

Mr. Oliver said that he wanted people to confront the reality that eating any kind of meat involves killing an animal, even if it is done with a minimum of pain.

From today's NYT, which seems to require membership, again, to view:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dinin ... ref=slogin

-ramon

What I'm further interested by is this commercial positioning of Britain as an Edenic abattoir. If you've seen the ads for Oliver's new show on Food Boobtube you know of which I speak. If you're familiar with Fergie Henderson, Fearnley-Whittingstall, et al...then you know of which I speak. The s/o just the other day informed me that Oliver is supposedly-preparing to vivisect the carcass of a "morbidly obese" person a la TV. To which I added, "bullshit." Regardless of internets' neuroses, that's just fucked...hence, ridiculous.

So...how *does* one parse the branding of the UK as "snout-to-tail" eating and "preservation" AND also recognize that it's, for the most part, totally "ambulance-chased" by the type of retards at Food Network eager to stoke the flames of those indoctrinated by culinary binary oppositions: i.e. chain vs. mom n' pop, hybridized vs. "organic," locavore vs. tech-centric?

what is this currying of favor?
what currency this culinary myopia?

kind of reminds me of this gaffigan sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-CC8c_eX8s

"Do you know what they do to those chickens?"
"No. But it's delicious"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/16/njamie216.xml

A friend of mine in the Uk sent this article to me via email today. She said that this made huge news over there. I guess that he has a show over there called "Fowl Dinners" that Jaime has going and it sort of rallies against cage farming and from what I've read he's said he isn't using anything in his resturants but cage free. I'm not sure what his popularity or reputation is like on his home front but I guess he's getting slammed pretty hard over this.

Erzsi wrote: I'm not sure what his popularity or reputation is like on his home front but I guess he's getting slammed pretty hard over this.

His NEW book is REALLY popular. It was *intended* to be an e-book for sale until someone accidently mailed out the file. Needless to say, it has had an enormous circulation .. including the three I have been e-mailed.

This is just kind of funny to me...I guess I get Oliver's point - I mean, how do people think chickens get into the plastic wrap and styro, anyway? As long as he's being sanitary and safe, the chicken's going to die and be eaten one way or another. We tend to anthropomorphize animals we eat if we think about it too much - I don't know that the chickens do much navel-gazing.

I'd like chicken that tastes like chicken, please. If I have to learn to kill & butcher it myself I won't be happy - but I'll do it.

jlawrence01 wrote:

Erzsi wrote: I'm not sure what his popularity or reputation is like on his home front but I guess he's getting slammed pretty hard over this.

His NEW book is REALLY popular. It was *intended* to be an e-book for sale until someone accidently mailed out the file. Needless to say, it has had an enormous circulation .. including the three I have been e-mailed.

My understanding is that this is a hoax:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/nakedchef.asp

I think the message is a positive one, and I say "bully" to Mr Oliver. To criticize a media creature for using the media positively is silly. I believe he also tried, with mixed success, to better school lunches in the UK with more than just platitudes.

That said, I have no intention on returning to the Food Network, yet. (With the exception of Good Eats, if I remember.)

-ramon

Didn't Gordon Ramsay essentially do this already on "The F Word"? The whole turkey segment on his show was supposed to emphasize "where food comes from" - he raised the turkeys with his family. True, he didn't kill the turkey himself, but he showed them being electrocuted without cutting away or anything.

I find the hole thing ridiculous. Do all you "city folk" not realize that for centuries chickens, hogs, cows, ducks were all basically "free roaming" on the farmers land. It is not until recent decades that the factory produced chickens have taken over, driving the small farmer out of business.

When I was younger I would go to my Uncles farm. He would have chickens, cows, hogs free roaming all over his land. When it was dinner time we would go out, pick out a chicken, take it it to the basement and slaughter it. Yes, I did look it in the eyes. This has been the norm of farm like since the begining of farming. Now these chefs are trying to play this off as something new and innovative???? Just because now it is the chef raising his own livestock instead of the farmer? Blah! And chef gets all teary eyed and shows some compassion for the animal? Please. If these guys lived a farmers life, day in day out, in an old farmhouse, where you are killing these animals to survive, and not to put on a plate at a 5 star restaurant, then go home to their posh homes, their compassion would quickly fade into the realism of life.

While I applaud their bringing "battery" chicken to the light, a process I am against not because the chickens suffer but because it hurts the small farmer. Definately, a good publicitiy stunt for all the champagne drinking, caviar eating, elitest who has probably never been out of the city to a real farm. What a joke.

davecamaro1994 wrote:Blah! And chef gets all teary eyed and shows some compassion for the animal? Please. If these guys lived a farmers life, day in day out, in an old farmhouse, where you are killing these animals to survive, and not to put on a plate at a 5 star restaurant, then go home to their posh homes, their compassion would quickly fade into the realism of life.

Why not compassion? I don't think raising animals to slaughter and having compassion or any type of moral compunction about killing them are mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, I think it's human - we should feel gross and hesitant about taking the life of an animal.

Anyway, I think I get your point. Yes, there is something exploitive about certain chefs who seem to really want to hammer down the point of "where our food comes from." There's also an inherent moral superiority to it that turns me off as well.

Why not compassion? I don't think raising animals to slaughter and having compassion or any type of moral compunction about killing them are mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, I think it's human - we should feel gross and hesitant about taking the life of an animal.


I am not saying to go out and just kill animals. But like you said, these animals are raised for slaughter. That is their purpose. To take animals lives like Mr. Burns in the steakhouse(Simpsons reference) I feel is wrong since it is unnecessary. That guy was just tooting his own horn.

aschie30 wrote:

davecamaro1994 wrote:Blah! And chef gets all teary eyed and shows some compassion for the animal? Please. If these guys lived a farmers life, day in day out, in an old farmhouse, where you are killing these animals to survive, and not to put on a plate at a 5 star restaurant, then go home to their posh homes, their compassion would quickly fade into the realism of life.

Why not compassion? I don't think raising animals to slaughter and having compassion or any type of moral compunction about killing them are mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, I think it's human - we should feel gross and hesitant about taking the life of an animal.

Anyway, I think I get your point. Yes, there is something exploitive about certain chefs who seem to really want to hammer down the point of "where our food comes from." There's also an inherent moral superiority to it that turns me off as well.

Having not seen the Oliver show I can't comment on it specifically, but I also wonder if, in many cases, it isn't an issue of trend or moral superiority but rather the result of frustration with and response to those who would ban animal products altogether if given the opportunity. When there's a disconnect about where your meat comes from, as davecamaro points out, that's when you get into situations like the foie gras ban where people are penning legislation, in many cases based on a fundamental lack of understanding of what puts that animal product, and others deemed acceptable, on the table.

It's very interesting to me because it seems as though people on both sides of the debate are using the exact same tactic -- bringing diners face to face with the reality of where their meat comes from -- with opposing goals.

Dmnkly wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

davecamaro1994 wrote:Blah! And chef gets all teary eyed and shows some compassion for the animal? Please. If these guys lived a farmers life, day in day out, in an old farmhouse, where you are killing these animals to survive, and not to put on a plate at a 5 star restaurant, then go home to their posh homes, their compassion would quickly fade into the realism of life.

Why not compassion? I don't think raising animals to slaughter and having compassion or any type of moral compunction about killing them are mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, I think it's human - we should feel gross and hesitant about taking the life of an animal.

Anyway, I think I get your point. Yes, there is something exploitive about certain chefs who seem to really want to hammer down the point of "where our food comes from." There's also an inherent moral superiority to it that turns me off as well.

Having not seen the Oliver show I can't comment on it specifically, but I also wonder if, in many cases, it isn't an issue of trend or moral superiority but rather the result of frustration with and response to those who would ban animal products altogether if given the opportunity. When there's a disconnect about where your meat comes from, as davecamaro points out, that's when you get into situations like the foie gras ban where people are penning legislation, in many cases based on a fundamental lack of understanding of what puts that animal product, and others deemed acceptable, on the table.

It's very interesting to me because it seems as though people on both sides of the debate are using the exact same tactic -- bringing diners face to face with the reality of where their meat comes from -- with opposing goals.

Yeah, I'll generally agree with that too, but I don't think anyone is even close to successfully banning animal products as a whole such that this type of response by certain chefs is necessary. (Let's face it - while I'm certainly not in favor of a foie gras ban, we are dealing with a special type of meat processing there - I'm not saying that you couldn't argue that there aren't similar or worse "abuses" in the raising of other animals, but the known process of force feeding made foie gras processors easy targets.) Overall, it just smacks as trendy to me. It seems like Oliver doesn't want to be one-upped by fellow Englishman Gordon Ramsay. While I've not seen Gordon Ramsay publicly slaughter anything (I too haven't seen the Oliver episode), he did get up on a soapbox during his "F Word" show to hit people over the head with the notion that the jiggly stuff in the cellophane in the grocery store actually comes from a live animal at one point. I agree that, in theory, people need to be more aware of where their food comes from, but Ramsay has gone so far on the "F Word" as to raise animals, name them, get his little kids attached to them, only to kill them and put it on the table for them to eat, all the while teaching them the hard lesson of "where food comes from" as well as making him seem more socially conscious. It just seems like another self-serving way of chefs to up their public profile by getting on a soapbox.

Re: GR and the F Word .... the next season after the turkeys he did pigs in his backyard. The kids loved them, of course, but it was GR who had the hardest time taking them to slaughter.

Those coupld episodes were very good television and not at all self serving IMO.

tem wrote:Re: GR and the F Word .... the next season after the turkeys he did pigs in his backyard. The kids loved them, of course, but it was GR who had the hardest time taking them to slaughter.

Those coupld episodes were very good television and not at all self serving IMO.

Maybe I have a different read on this (admittedly, my bullshit threshold is pretty low), and I didn't see the pigs episodes (although I heard about them - aren't they named Trinnie and Susannah?). Anyhow, the turkey episodes I was thinking of included a saga involving one particular turkey named "Gary" (after Gary Glitter, I believe), where Gary was sick and required antibiotics. Gordon was involving his kids pretty heavily in this sad drama, disappointing them by telling them that Gary might have to be put down due to his illness and wouldn't be awful and it would be especially awful if they couldn't get to eat Gary, and the whole time I was thinking, why is he screwing with his kids' heads like that?! (Like it would be terrible that Gary had to be put down but not so terrible to wring Gary's neck and eat him.)

Anyhow, that was just my take.

The pigs on our farm had names too. Generally we called em bacon, chops, ham, BB(for babyback). We also have several flocks of wild turkey that roam our farmland(about 900 acres). Which we do not allow others o hunt. We let em eat the corn. Every Thanksgiving week we throw out some corn, watch em come, pick out a big Tom, and BAM! good eatin.

The only episode I have ever seen of this guy was the chicken.

I don't have a problem with celebrity chefs or anyone else who gets on a soap box to preach about the importance of understanding where our food comes from. To whatever degree one thinks it's just a marketing ploy, it PALES in comparison to the mass marketing tactics used to convince people that meat is something other than a dead animal. Advertising, grocery store packaging, heck even the names we use for meat (beef, pork) are designed to intentionally distract people from the reality that an animal was bludgeoned to death to get this to your plate. The marketeers know that if consumers really thought about that, some of them would be less likely to gobble it up all the time. Because of this, we're left with a bizarre, problematic paradox where despite the excessive expense involved in packaging and branding this so-called "meat", the heavily marketed stuff is so cheap that for those of us who like the taste of fresh, local meat better, we've got to pay a small fortune to find it. This sucks. Meat from local farmers should be CHEAPER than stuff produced, packaged and shipped from the other side of the country. These grandstanding chefs are engaging in a much needed effort to combat the mass marketing that has totally screwed up Americans' idea of what food is, and the hoped-for result is a culture of increased demand and, therefore, lower prices, for locally produced food.

aschie30 wrote:Maybe I have a different read on this (admittedly, my bullshit threshold is pretty low), and I didn't see the pigs episodes (although I heard about them - aren't they named Trinnie and Susannah?). Anyhow, the turkey episodes I was thinking of included a saga involving one particular turkey named "Gary" (after Gary Glitter, I believe), where Gary was sick and required antibiotics. Gordon was involving his kids pretty heavily in this sad drama, disappointing them by telling them that Gary might have to be put down due to his illness and wouldn't be awful and it would be especially awful if they couldn't get to eat Gary, and the whole time I was thinking, why is he screwing with his kids' heads like that?! (Like it would be terrible that Gary had to be put down but not so terrible to wring Gary's neck and eat him.)

Anyhow, that was just my take.

The turkeys were named after english celeb chefs ... Jamie, Ainsley, Gary, Marco (I think). And yes, the pigs were Trinny & Susannah

I recall the Gary being sick situation and I think GR was saying more that that's the way it goes on the farm. Animals die for your food and people have become unnaturally divorced from the whole process. Way back in the Olden Days, he'd have sent his kid out back to chop Gary's head off personally. He was showing his kids that the turkey just doesn't magically show up on the dinner table. I didn't see it as messing with them at all.

tem wrote:I recall the Gary being sick situation and I think GR was saying more that that's the way it goes on the farm. Animals die for your food and people have become unnaturally divorced from the whole process. Way back in the Olden Days, he'd have sent his kid out back to chop Gary's head off personally. He was showing his kids that the turkey just doesn't magically show up on the dinner table. I didn't see it as messing with them at all.

We used to be involved in the slaughter of my great aunts's chickens. My wife's family butchered a pig each season.

Last spring, the Schaumburg Park District farm slaughtered a pig on a Friday and dressed the animal. Then they completed the butchering process the next day.

I noted that the children from 5-15 were pretty interested in the entire process. It was the adults that were squeamish.

tem wrote:
I recall the Gary being sick situation and I think GR was saying more that that's the way it goes on the farm. Animals die for your food and people have become unnaturally divorced from the whole process. Way back in the Olden Days, he'd have sent his kid out back to chop Gary's head off personally. He was showing his kids that the turkey just doesn't magically show up on the dinner table. I didn't see it as messing with them at all.

i agree - he had been preparing them for the slaughter since day 1. As soon as they brought the turkeys home, Ramsay was asking his kids which one they wanted to eat first. He brought the birds inside to see the oven, etc. Although perhaps he made a bad decision in giving the birds names, his kids seemed quite comfortable with the idea of killing and eating the turkeys when the time came around to it. They didn't cry or carry on.

It's important to note that he did not allow them to watch the slaughter. i think that was a smart decision on his part, since his children are rather young. i say all of this not being a parent myself though...

tem wrote:I recall the Gary being sick situation and I think GR was saying more that that's the way it goes on the farm. Animals die for your food and people have become unnaturally divorced from the whole process. Way back in the Olden Days, he'd have sent his kid out back to chop Gary's head off personally. He was showing his kids that the turkey just doesn't magically show up on the dinner table. I didn't see it as messing with them at all.

Yes but Gordon Ramsay isn't a farmer! And his kids aren't poor ye olde farmhands who don't go to school, know how to run the tractor and have wrung the necks of umpteen chickens! I guess that's where my line is drawn with this whole Oliver acting as teacher/public executioner and Gordon acting as teacher/livestock farmer -- it's inherently inauthentic coming from public chef personalities and multimillionaire dabblers. That's just my opinion, though, and I realize others don't have the low tolerance threshold that I may have, either.

Speaking strictly as "city folk" here I think that it's important for people to understand where their meat is coming from. I think that it's important to understand that the food you pick up in the grocery store in those little smartly wrapped plastic containers came from an animal that died to end up on your plate. I don't think that it's wrong to bring that to light so that people understand that something did have to die for their dinner. I think that as time goes on and people are farther away from the actual process involving this it's not bad to bring it up to attention again.

I also think that while animals are livestock, it is important to treat your livestock well, and it's not a bad thing to bring 'battery' farming to light.

I summered with my family at various relatives farms growing up, I understood from a young age that the pigs and chickens were solely being kept for slaughter or eggs. I think that it was valuable for me because it gave me a different understanding of what it took to get my dinner onto my plate.

I think that its pretty natural to be squeamish about slaughtering an animal if it isn't something that you do regularly. Like anything else the more you do something the more it becomes normal and the more removed from the process you are.

I was raised on a small farm in ohio where i still live.
we've had just about every type of farm animal over the years but mostly we raise cattle.
growing up we learned at a very young age to not get attached to the animals, as they were meant for slaughter. well the steers anyway. we named them, but even that was to remind what they were meant for, as there names were T-bone, Chop, Burger, Roast etc. it was a way for us to identify them. (later on we just eartagged them with a number.)
i have personally butchered my own pigs, turkeys, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and deer. our steers, lambs, goats we always had butchered. (because we didn't have the facilities.)
As a small farmer, while you may not be attached to the animals as pets. you do take excellent care of them, as they are your investment.

that being said, people are too squemish about how animals are killed. there is absolutely nothing inhuman about a bolt to the head, it as as effective a quick and painless death as anything else. or sledgehammer or whatever may be used. quite often what you are doing is not killing the animal in the first place but rather knocking it unconcious so that it can feel no pain, and then cutting an artery so that it bleeds out. i realize that this makes some "city folk" squeemish. but there is no reason to stop the practice.

by the way, todays meat chickens have been bred to gain weight so quickly, that even if you raise them in a large pen, or free range. they will do nothing but sit in front of the feeder and gorge themselves all day. they literally only get up to go over to the waterer, and then come right back to the feeder sit down, and eat more. thats not to say there aren't chickens who will roam, but they are different breeds and really don't have the meat quality. to have tender meat you need an animal that hasn't used it muscles. so honestly small pens are as much about good meat as they are about fitting more animals in the space.

Bulldog_Shotgun wrote:or sledgehammer or whatever may be used.

Jamie Oliver does the Funky Chicken on TV: http://www.jamieoliver.com/about/jamie- ... er-dancing

HI,

In my travels to various farms, I was offered to buy a live 10-pound chicken for $15. The gears in the brain working running at high speed, I considered my options:

- Take crated bird home.
- Do the deed on the patio.
- Really an attempt, because the bird runs off frantic from the car drive.

OR

- In the confines of my kitchen, less opportunity for bird to take off.
- Do the deed, but get all squemish. Scream. Cut myself and not the bird. I get stitches and bird runs around house.

Now if I had someone to share the experience, ie. party of the first part holds bird and second party does the deed. Hmmmm, I might do it.

I left telling the lady, I needed to think about it. I still am.

Gordon Ramsay knocks off a turkey. He had an elegant method: stick electrode in mouth, turn on the juice. Gone.

Regards,

I wonder if you could use one of those cones they put on injured dogs...