What does it take to change people’s buying habits? Last year there were a few programs on TV about factory farming chickens. Thousands of people were ‘moved’ by it but how many actually acted on what they’d seen and looked for a proper free range bird?
The trouble is, a ‘free range’ label does not mean real free range birds wandering round a field. It is very difficult to guage how free range chickens have lived without visiting the farm. Faced with this, many people have chosen to ignore the issue altogether. This should not happen; whenever awareness is raised a solution must be offered.

So, here’s the next thing to raise awareness: As we’re sure you would gather from previous articles, we are great fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his crusading for better food. This week his new series starts on Channel 4 starting on Thursday at 8pm and deals with chickens.

Each week he is inviting a different group of fast food-loving, urban dwellers to spend a week at River Cottage HQ. His mission, of course, is to change their ways forever.

The first show takes a group of chicken-lovers living off takeaways and cheap supermarket chicken. Unafraid to use shock tactics, Hugh exposes the gang to the full horrors of factory poultry farms in the hope that they will embrace the free range alternative. So he asks them to care for the River Cottage poultry flock, bond with the birds and at the end of the week, turn them into dinner. But will he succeed?

To see the undercover footage from the factory (courtesy of Compassion in World Farming) that wasn’t all seen in the programme please click the below link. But be warned…. it isn’t pretty.

Click here to watch the footage.
And now the solution: Have a look at your local BigBarn map and find out who is producing proper free range chicken in your area. And take a visit to see how free they are. After the Avian Flu scare there may not be very many so ask your local farmer if he has thought about producing chickens.
Make sure you are also registered to get our newsletter by registering here so that if someone starts producing chickens in your area we can tell you. If we want good food we may have to persuade local farmers to grow it for us.

Is a farmer’s market your idea of a great day out?

Do you have compulsive urge to stop whenever you see an ‘Eggs for sale’ sign?

Are you the one who bores everyone rigid about what came in your veg-box this week?

Then you could help BigBarn AND earn some money while you’re doing it!
We’ve had so many people getting in touch with us, asking how they can help, that we’ve decided to set up the BigBarn Fine Food Crusader Program.
Even with the superpowers of Carrot Man to hand, we can’t be in hundreds of places at once. But with your help, we can!
We need people to act as our eyes and ears on the ground in their local area. We do everything we can to make sure that the BigBarn map is up to date and error-free. But although we may be really quite magnificent, we’re not perfect. Mistakes happen. People get left off the map.
That’s where you come in. As a BigBarn Local Food Crusader, you’ll help us to:

Change producers details where we’ve got them wrong.

Add new producers to our map

Sign up new BigBarn members (and earn a bit of cash doing it).

Spread the lovely-smelling BigBarn word around the countryshire.
You can do it in your spare time. You don’t need to wear a carrot on your head (you can if you like though), and you make no commitment to us whatsoever. Simply keeping track of what’s going on in your local area and popping on to the BigBarn website to keep us updated will be an enormous help. Of course if you want to start walking into your local pub with a large bell, shouting ‘oh yay, oh yay, hear ye all the good word of BigBarn’ then so much the better. But we won’t hold you to it.
You’ll get a welcome pack with all the info you need as well as BigBarn car stickers, postcards and any other exciting things we’ve got knocking around the farm.
We only want one person for each area so hurry hurry (in fact, frankly, panic) and become the BigBarn Local Food Crusader for your area today. Then if any more people start trying to crusade in your area, you can shout ‘get orf moy laaaaand’, and stuff like that.
Call us now on 01234 871005, or email ed@bigbarn.co.uk.