Have you heard the one about the giant chicken, 21 countries and 39 days? It may sound like the start of a bad joke but this is in fact the basis of an extremely worthwhile and exciting European-wide street action campaign calling for honest labelling of chicken meat which starts tomorrow.
Over 39 days, Rosa the broiler chicken will visit 21 European Union member states to lobby for changes to the way chicken meat is labelled. Rosa represents a huge movement of campaigners and organisations, including OneKind, who believe consumers should be informed where their meat comes from and be able to see clearly on the labelling how the meat was produced. The tour will last 39 days which is the average life span of an intensively farmed meat chicken.
The tour starts tomorrow in London and will end on 8th September in Brussels. Along the way the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Spain and France will be visited.
Rosa’s tour has been organised by Labelling Matters, which is a campaigning partnership comprising of Compassion in World Farming, the RSPCA, the World Society for the Protection of Animals and the Soil Association. The joint initiative is supported by over 30 organisations, including OneKind, from all over Europe. The campaign calls for mandatory labelling of meat and dairy products which clearly states their production method, be this free range, organic or intensively farmed. It is thought this will benefit consumers, farmers and animals and will prove useful to the European Commission in the delivery of its key ambitions in the 2012-2015 Animal Welfare Strategy.
OneKind feels strongly that issues with farm animal welfare must be taken seriously. We blogged recently on the worrying trend in supermarkets stocking smaller, lighter birds which had led to an application to increase the capacity of chickens crammed in industrial units to meet the demands. The standards are already woeful and increasing the number of chickens per unit would be completely retrograde.
So if you live in London, or indeed further afield, then look out for Rosa as she hopes to get members of the public asking the simple question: where did this chicken come from? All the information on Rosa’s route can be found on the Labelling Matters website and you can take action on our website by sending a message to the European Commission calling for changes to how food is labelled. You can follow Rosa on Twitter @39Days4Rosa or using the hashtag #39Days4Rosa.