Farming Today - 04/05/2009

Anna Hill visits an intensive broiler farm producing 800,000 chickens and asks what the future holds for British chicken growers. Chicken is the UK's favourite meat and we are eating 62 per cent more than we were 20 years ago. However, UK production has only risen 42 per cent in that time so we are importing more from Europe, Brazil and Thailand. Anna visits an intensive chicken farm in Norfolk which produces 800,000 birds a year. Farmer Nigel Joice says that his five million-pound high-tech sheds have allowed him to farm efficiently, but others with older equipment have made sustained losses and cannot afford to reinvest. With new costs and legislation round the corner he says the next generation of farmers are questioning whether it is really worth farming British chicken. So where will our roast chicken come from?