Food, glorious food

There was something uncomfortable about watching Fearnley-Whittingstall, a gentleman farmer, trying to guilt-trip people on low incomes over what they eat. There's no doubting his commitment. And yes, in an ideal world, we would all eat locally sourced meat raised in the most glorious of conditions. Millions of people with the available cash spend their extra money to ensure they do just that. I am one of them. I am willing to spend a significant proportion of my income on ingredients, because I am a greedy man who has the luxury of being able to support an overly developed interest in his dinner.

But there are much bigger issues at play here and to understand them we need to take the long view. The reality is that the downside to human health from the factory farming of chicken - a certain amount of salmonella and campylobacter, both of which can be eliminated by proper handling in the kitchen - are vastly outweighed by the upside. However much the animal welfare lobby may disagree, it is arguable that the upside also outweighs the significant negatives for those intensively reared chickens.

'Prior to the 1950s, large numbers of people died because of tuberculosis due to a simple lack of nourishment,' says Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University and an expert on food contamination and nutritional issues. 'The wide availability of cheap animal proteins, both chicken and fish, has put an end to that.' The availability of those intensively reared chickens that go from egg to slaughter in just 39 days without ever seeing daylight is, therefore, not merely a question of taste to be pursued doggedly by a lovable TV chef. It's a question of basic human health.

Jay Rayner