The Peter Millington Column

CRYING FOWL OVER CHICKEN SOYA BOYCOTT

28-07-2006

Yesterday morning I received my latest campaign update from Greenpeace and boy does it look as grim as it ever has.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no peddler of environmental doom and gloom by any means. I signed up to an annual subscription to Greenpeace about 15 years ago and the £19 a year it costs me to pay for guys with beards to ram their inflatables under the hulls of Japanese whaling ships whilst I sit in the comfort of my armchair churning out greenhouse gases, at least helps to make me feel like I am doing my bit.

But reading this issue reminds me of a friend who once told me that he used to be a member of Amnesty International until he became so depressed reading about all the horrible things human beings are doing to each other out there that he finally decided to cancel his standing order and remain happily oblivious thereon-in.

Did you know, for instance, that 10% of the world's mammals live in the Amazon rainforest and 15% of the world's land based plants? Did you know that the Amazon pumps out seven trillion tonnes of water a year into the atmosphere which regulates the climate worldwide? I didn't even know what a trillion was until I read this month's Greenpeace mag, come to think about it I still don't, but it sounds like a lot. (Wasn't she in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?)

But did you also know that the most bio diverse region on the planet is being deforested at about 25,000 square kilometres a year to make way for soya plantations? I'm just over 40 at the moment, by the time I'm 80 the Amazon rainforest will have vanished, never to return, and removing 7 trillion tonnes of something from any equation has got to have an impact somewhere down the line?

But what is all this soya used for? To feed chickens at places like Sun-Valley foods in Herefordshire according to Greenpeace. And what happens to the chickens? We have been eating them in our family buckets from KFC or as bagged-up-ready-to-go barbecued wings from the hot counter at Tesco for years apparently.

This news therefore meant that I would now have to face up to an ethical dilemma I know I should have considered long ago but have found it more convenient to put off… you see, boy, do I love my lip-smackin', finger lickin', fat drippin' chicken! In fact, just a few days ago I was even trying to persuade my 7 year old son to give up being a vegetarian and tuck into a tender piece of home-cooked Sunday-roast poultry instead. Incidentally, it was my own fault he became a vegetarian because I told him the tale of the Tamworth Two one evening as his bedtime story - the little pigs who escaped from the lorry on their way to the abattoir - and I'm obviously good at telling a woeful yarn because his conversion to vegetarianism was instant and irreversible.

The challenge of having a vegetarian in the family is trying to find the appetising alternatives to nuggets and fish fingers. We've done the Quorn sausages which take two hours to cook and I've been right through all of Jamie Oliver's books trying to find those yummy recipes that every 7 year old will find “real pucka”, but there's only so many things even Jamie can do with chips, raisins and chopped nuts. So with a suppressed sense of guilt I thought I'd try brainwashing him the other way, you know the arguments about fish being cold blooded so they just ain't got cute souls like pigs and sheep? Also, well chickens just wouldn't be alive if we didn't breed them to eat for Sunday dinner, so by eating them at least we give them an 80% innings that they wouldn't have otherwise had - that's a great one because it combines logic with sentimentality, although obviously I didn't let on about the little tiny boxes they live in - hey come on, kids grow up too fast as it is without getting into the difference between a farm and a factory. I'll leave that to some left wing teacher when he's 11.

However, the latest Greenpeace fanzine seemed to shoot my most recent and possibly cynical ploy right out of the ozone layer. For more than 24 hours I was starting to feel that I'm going to have to do a little bit more towards the cause of saving the planet than writing my annual cheque to the hippies in dinghies, but now I hear today that McDonalds have already made a guarantee not to use Amazon-grown soya and some of the others like KFC are queuing up to sign the moratorium (wasn't he in Sherlock Holmes?). So, a bit like the proverbial butterfly which flaps it's wings in China and causes a hurricane in Florida, my £19 a year seems to have had some affect after all!

So I think I'm probably now justified in celebrating this news by sinking back into me armchair with a delicious bucket of sizzling KFC and a genetically modified corn-on-the-cob for the nipper!