The Devonshire Red Chicken
Chicken as it should be
Home » Devonshire Red News » Dr News Archive » Iconic Travesty
Iconic travesty
Monday 20 August 2007
At Asda you can buy a whole British chicken for just £2.00. While the supermarket hails it as ‘iconic' Andrew Maunder, commercial director of the south west's leading poultry company Lloyd Maunder Ltd., considers what the real cost will be.
Asda's selling whole British chicken for £2.00, and they're flying off the shelves apparently. The supermarket is calling it an ‘icon', one of the few retail products people will cross town specifically to buy. Its packaging sports a union jack flag and a red tractor, assuring customers the chicken has been reared in the UK to strict EU standards.
All good news for consumers and Asda then … and the rosy glow around this product brightened even further last week when it was reported that the rate of inflation had plummeted from 2.4pc in June to just 1.9pc in July, with cut price food such as Asda's £2.00 chicken being a key contributory factor. So it's all good, isn't it?
Well, no. The reality is that you can't produce a chicken for £2.00. These birds have to be hatched, housed, fed, slaughtered, packaged and transported. There are waste and environmental charges to pay, and welfare standards to maintain. The cost of wheat on which chicken are fed has spiraled to an all time high with no plateau in sight as yet. And don't forget, there are people who need to earn a living wage from doing all of this, not least our West Country farmers.
Asda is selling it's ‘iconic' chicken for less than it costs to produce them which, apart from being unsustainable is, in my view, just plain wrong. If you can get something for virtually nothing you don't value it and you certainly don't respect it. No animal should be cheapened in this way.
Back in 1957 when my family first started producing chicken for the retail market, the goal was for a 10 shilling bird. In its day this was iconic. Ten shillings was the price point that made chicken, which had previously been a luxury meat enjoyed only on high days and holidays, affordable. Today the equivalent cost would be more than £8.00 – four times what Asda is charging.
Essentially, chicken has been cheap for years. Over the past two decades just about every other foodstuff has increased its real price by 50 – 200 per cent while, according to Defra, chicken has increased by just 15 per cent. In the last four years the price of chicken has actually reduced by four per cent, which is ludicrous given that production costs are at their highest point ever.
Just a few months ago industry leaders and commentators were warning that the era of cheap food was coming to an end. Global wheat shortages were resulting in unprecedented increases in food production costs, and we were all going to have to pay more for our weekly groceries. The drive to buy local and the willingness to support higher animal welfare standards by ‘trading up' meant we were all ready to spend more of our monthly pay packet on food.
So what's changed? Wheat prices are still rising along with food production costs, so is it a case of calling both consumers' and producers' bluff? We had our heads around paying more for the food we eat, but when faced with such a bargain we just can't resist it, no matter about the sustainability and welfare concerns it raises? We may be ‘grabbing it while we can' on the expectation that it's a short term offer, but the implications are long term for everyone in the chain, from farmer and processor to supermarket and consumer.
Ultimately, selling a chicken at less than it costs to produce it is unsustainable. British poultry producers are highly regulated and produce to rigorous standards, which means they can't and won't cut corners in order to actually rear birds to this price point. But someone somewhere has to lose money. At the moment it's the supermarket, which admits it's marketing the product as a loss leader to get people into the store. But, inevitably, other supermarkets will probably follow suit and there will be pressure for this low price to be maintained, and possibly an expectation that those further down the chain will have to begin absorbing some of that loss.
All the while consumers' expectations will be adjusting to this new low price. Its cheapness will make other specialist products such as corn fed, free range and organic chicken look ultra expensive, which would be disastrous for West Country poultry farmers. Nationally, around 10 per cent of the poultry consumed is higher welfare, but it represents more than 60 per cent of Lloyd Maunder's output, marketed under our own Devonshire Red™ brand. Two of the key reasons for this are the West Country's landscape and its family-farm infrastructure which are ideal for these higher welfare rearing methods. So if consumers begin to perceive free range and organic chicken as being poor value, demand will fall and our farmers will lose their livelihood.
Farmers are well used to the peaks and troughs of seasonal trading, but you can be sure they'll be watching this current £2.00 chicken scenario with particular concern. If you ask any of our poultry farmers what's most important to them, they'll undoubtedly say it's to know there's a demand for what they're producing and that they have a sustainable future on their farms.
The current scramble for Asda's £2.00 chicken shows they've no worries in terms of demand, but there's nothing sustainable about the price tag. Our farmers don't want to see their crops sold for less than they cost to produce – it doesn't bode well for the viability of their business or the UK poultry industry as a whole. With global competition from producers in Europe, Thailand and Brazil, there's justifiable concern that the growing appetite for ultra-low price chicken might eventually have to be filled from abroad.
As time goes on, in looking for the iconic price tag will consumers notice the disappearance of the Union Jack and Red Tractor labels? Will they remember how chicken reared on small family-run farms in the West Country used to taste? Surely that's too high a price to pay.
ENDS
For further press information contact Veronica Newport on 01363 866927 or veronica@n-pr.co.uk.