A farm’s fate in big egg debate

9:15am Monday 25th February 2008

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AMID all the discussion about battery caged chickens, one voice has been conspicuously quiet; that of those who work in intensive egg production.

Jamie Oliver has been cautious not to lay the blame for the production of battery eggs at the door of the farmers, but, nevertheless, we have heard little in the way of response from the people whose livelihood depends on this industry.

Bill Richards owns Dorset Fresh Eggs in Witchampton near Wimborne. His farm of 100,000 laying hens produces half a million eggs a week, which travel to hotels and restaurants as far as Trowbridge in the north, Reading to the east and Exeter, west. (The contrast with last week's 500 hens at Wyke Oliver farm is immediate).

"The media hype is a bit disappointing because all we have tried to do is to make food available for everyone," Bill said. "What upsets me is that everyone has got a choice. A very, very informed choice, because nobody is in any doubt about what goes on and what happens."

While the current amount of space per chicken is roughly equivalent to that of an A4 piece of paper, the changes in 2012 will give birds more space and perches. Bill explained: "Essentially they will still be in a cage; the stocking density will be changed."

For Bill, the costs involved in making the changes are huge - at least £20 per bird - and farms like his do not get any help from the government to implement these changes.

"To carry on we would have to build new, bigger houses with new cages. It would mean bulldozing down the houses and building again," said Bill, who keeps six flocks of birds of different ages in separate units. "From my point of view, we have not made enough money out of the eggs to invest in the new system that will be the bottom-of-the-line cage-produced egg still. It will still be the one that everybody wants to hate and it would cost me about £6 million to bring this unit up-to-speed."

Instead, Bill is shutting shop. "We will have to get rid of birds and we will have to get rid of 12 or 13 members of staff. Some of them have been here since they left school. They have made a career out of it. What am I going to tell them? We are not on the sidelines; this is happening right the way through the UK industry. This is a national problem."

Lindsay West, who manages the farm for Bill and has 40 years' experience in the industry, explained: "Up until 1969, egg production was subsidised, but, at the end of the 1960s, any subsidy was withdrawn, so we are completely independent."

"The thing with this media and publicity is when we started keeping them here they were all outside," said Bill - the unit in Witchampton has been used for egg production since the 1940s.

"The British agriculturists were being asked to produce enough food to feed the nation. The push was to get British agriculture modernised. The reason the birds came indoors, all the reasons were based on welfare.

"The survival rates were very poor outside. There were a lot of predators and parasites, which poultry are susceptible to and some of that still applies."

What of the culling of both newly born male chicks and laying hens after 74 weeks (the age after which their egg laying tails off)?

"It applies all across the board," said Lindsay, referring to the other egg producing systems. "You will never get away from the cruel facts of production."

"We are not barbaric. We are not callous, horrible people," said Bill.

"I'm keen to ensure that the welfare standards are high. The birds are in cages, but everything has to be right: the food, the water, ventilation, vaccinations.

"We have got to protect that bird from all the things that might come and harm them.

"We operate to a standard laid down by Laid in Britain. It's a quality assurance scheme, exactly the same as the Lion Code. It was set up to prevent salmonella, which was the main problem around 1986. At that time, that was the main concern."

Bill and Lindsay believe that the ban in 2012 will lead to a shortfall in production.

"The eggs will be brought in from outside the EU from conventional cages and it will not be illegal to sell them," said Lindsay. "They are going to be coming from the US, India, and Eastern Europe."

As for Jamie Oliver, Bill said: "I think he is a fantastic cook. But he is not a politician and he is not a farmer."

He added: "The one thing I do want to say about the celebrity chefs when they talk about the quality and taste, their argument is flawed. I can not agree with them about that. When we started moving forward we entered a lot of competitions. The eggs were tasted by scientists, chefs, vets and we were coming out nationally as award winners year after year, three years in a row. It actually got embarrassing. Eggs from all systems were entered. The quality is achievable because we grow our own food and we pay attention to detail."

At the farm, 90 per cent of the chicken's food is grown on 1,000 acres and Dorset Fresh Eggs deliver locally and rear their chickens on site. But another problem facing poultry farmers at the moment is the high cost of wheat. "It's gone from £60 a tonne to £170 a tonne in the space of a 12 month period," said Bill. "It would be much easier to grow just corn and feed the world that way. Chickens are particularly difficult to farm because of the numbers you are talking about."

"A point Jamie Oliver made is that there's enough land in the UK to put all egg producing birds outside," said Bill. "However, there's not enough room then to produce the food to feed them which, in turn, feeds us.

"We are a very, very decadent race. It's hugely inflationary. If we farmed free-range and organically, across the world, we would all starve. We have got to divorce food production from emotion."