A few years ago we wrote about UK-based Omlet and its hen-and-coop kits for urban or suburban gardens. Recognizing that a chicken-keeping venture can be daunting for those who have never done it before, however, an Australian contender is now offering a short-term rental option that lets customers try before they buy.

Sydney-based Rentachook manufactures and sells a variety of coops, as well as selling the “chooks” (as they’re known down under) and feed to go with them. For those who want to test the chicken-keeping waters before diving in, the company lets customers try out its Eco-Coop package and see how it goes for as much as six weeks (or even longer by arrangement) before they commit to keeping it. Included in the AUD 360 package are a chicken coop and two hens along with feeder, waterer, food and straw. Customers can try it out and see how well keeping chickens fits in with their lifestyle and garden; if they decide to return the package, they get back AUD 260 of the money they paid. For those who decide to keep the set, on the other hand, benefits include fresh, free-range eggs (up to six per chicken per week, the company says) and an environmentally sustainable pet that eats scraps, removes weeds and turns compost. (Rentachook’s coops, incidentally, are also made as sustainably as possible, using Australian grown plantation pine and wheels from old prams.) Delivery and setup ranges from AUD 50 to AUD 80, depending on location.

In a world with skyrocketing food costs and growing interest in organic and sustainable methods, there’s plenty of reason for consumers far and wide to produce their own. Make it easier for them—such as by reducing the up-front commitment—and you just may be rewarded with some golden eggs yourself!

Website: www.rentachook.com.au
Contact: MrChicken@optus.ap.blackberry.net

Spotted by: David Haddock

Smithfield Foods — Raising the Bar in Animal Welfare

When it comes to animal welfare policies and processes, count on us to lead the way. In fact, we’re recognized by the world’s foremost experts in animal well-being as setting the standard for America’s pork industry—and we’re applying those same best practices to our global operations.

Comprehensive Animal Management

Murphy-Brown, our livestock production subsidiary, has developed the industry’s most comprehensive animal welfare management program to ensure our animals receive proper care.

The Animal Welfare Management System (AWMS) was closely developed with two of the world’s foremost experts in animal behavior and animal handling. Experts from a variety of disciplines—veterinary medicine, reproductive physiology, production management, marketing, management system administration, legal, logistics, and public affairs—participated in an animal welfare committee to make sure animal well-being practices would be evaluated from many different perspectives.

After the AWMS was implemented, adherence to its objectives and requirements was audited by the USDA Process Verified program and continues to be verified through random third-party audits as part of the National Pork Board’s Pork Quality Assurance program known as PQA Plus™. Today, our program serves as a model for other companies in the industry and, most importantly, assures our animals are safe, comfortable and healthy.

Landmark Gestation Stall Policy

Beginning in 2007 and continuing over the next 10 years, our hog production subsidiary Murphy-Brown will move to using group pens for housing pregnant sows. The process will phase out individual gestation stalls on all company-owned sow farms in favor of group housing. We are also working with our contract growers regarding system conversion.

Smithfield Foods based its decision on initial results from its own three-year study into sow housing to determine the impact such a switch would have on sows. Preliminary results showed that group housing arrangements work as well as gestation stalls in providing sows with proper care during their pregnancies. This landmark decision further evidences our commitment to industry leadership.
Read what The Washington Post and The New York Times had to say about our landmark gestation stall announcement.

* Washington Post: Largest Pork Processor to Phase Out Crates
* New York Times: Pork Producer Says It Plans to Give Pigs More Room

Smithfield Foods, Inc. Animal Welfare Policy

Smithfield Foods, Inc. is committed to being the industry leader in animal welfare practices to assure respectful and humane treatment of animals that we own or process, to produce wholesome food products for our customers and to analyze our operations and practices, including internal and independent third party audits, to ensure continual improvement.

Smithfield Foods, Inc. and all its subsidiaries involved with the production or processing of live animals are required to provide:

* Comprehensive written animal welfare programs to ensure animal well-being.
* Shelter that is designed, maintained and operated to provide a physical environment that meets the animals’ needs.
* Access to adequate water and high-quality feed to meet animal nutrition requirements (production facilities) and in accordance with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act 1978 (processing facilities).
* Humane treatment of animals that ensures their well-being and complies with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
* Identification and appropriate treatment of animals in need of care.
* Humane treatment of animals which meets or exceeds the requirements of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1978, and all applicable American Meat Institute Animal Handling Guidelines (processing facilities).
* Timely use of humane methods to euthanize sick or injured animals not responding to care and treatment.

Adherence to the principles of this policy is a responsibility and requirement of those that interact with animals that are owned or processed by Smithfield Foods’ subsidiaries. Willful neglect or abuse of animals will not be tolerated and will result in immediate termination. Offenders may also be subject to criminal prosecution under applicable laws.

Murphy-Brown, LLC Antibiotic Usage Policy

Compliance with applicable laws, regulations and other requirements to which Murphy-Brown subscribes is the responsibility of every Murphy-Brown associate. The antibiotic usage policy refers to all employees responsible for dispensing, delivering and administering antibiotics.

Murphy-Brown’s antibiotic usage policy calls for the following:

* The responsible use of therapeutic antibiotics for the specific purpose of treating animals with disease or illness.
* The responsible use of preventative antibiotics to help prevent the spread or onset of a disease or illness with proper diagnostic confirmation.
* Adherence to all applicable laws including the Food and Drug Administration’s Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act regarding any extra-label drug use.
* No routine administration of antibiotics used in human medicine to healthy animals. For purposes of this policy, “routine” means consistent use of an antibiotic in the context of an individual animal over its entire life.
* Strict or extended adherence to all antibiotic withdrawal timelines established by the FDA and the Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank.
* No consistent use of feed-grade antimicrobials of human health significance over the life of a healthy animal. Use of particular antimicrobials as additives in feeds will be reviewed at least quarterly by a veterinarian and will be adjusted as appropriate, depending on disease prevention and control needs.
* Antibiotics used and antibiotic administration practices to be approved by licensed professional veterinarians.

Adherence to the principles of this policy is a responsibility and requirement of those who interact with the animals owned or managed by Murphy-Brown. Improper acquisition or usage of antibiotics will result in a minimum of a final written warning. Willful neglect or abuse of animals will not be tolerated and will result in immediate disciplinary action up to and including termination or prosecution.

Accident Response Plan Received Acknowledgment from Expert

Although they occur infrequently, accidents involving animals during transport can and do happen. We have developed an industry-leading accident response program.

Jennifer Woods, an Alberta, Canada-based livestock handling expert, analyzed our accident response plan through Murphy-Brown, our livestock production company, and praised it as “the standard for the industry in live-haul emergency response.”

In 2006, we revamped the way we respond to traffic accidents with animals present. Our accident response plan now instructs rescue workers to humanely euthanize severely injured animals as soon as the workers come across them. Our protocol also puts more emphasis on securing the area to control accident scenes and advises the proper way to safely open a tipped trailer.

“No other company in the world is as prepared to respond to motor vehicle accidents involving livestock as [Murphy-Brown is],” Woods said.

Responsibility — Animal Welfare Recognition

“Smithfield Foods and its Murphy-Brown production division are to be commended for their continuing commitment to ensuring animal welfare at its farms and abattoirs that is as high as is currently possible. Those efforts are pursuant to Murphy-Brown’s comprehensive Animal Welfare Management System…[a]n important reason this program has achieved such a successful record is that the company’s executive officers and division managers have been ever mindful of the importance of assuring its customers that the foods it produces, processes, and purveys come from socially responsible farms, and they have done whatever necessary to earn that distinction…”

Stanley E. Curtis, Ph. D.
Department of Animal Sciences
University of Illinois at Urbana

“Since 2001 when Murphy-Brown first joined the Animal Agriculture Alliance, the company has impressed me as a true leader in developing solutions to challenges, great and small. The company’s proactive initiative developing its animal welfare management program, which includes care both on-farm and during transportation, as well as its commitment to training its employees and growers on proper care and handling, sets the standard for the agricultural industry. Murphy-Brown doesn’t just talk about solutions. It makes them happen.”

Kay Johnson Smith
Executive Vice President
Animal Agriculture Alliance

By KIM SEVERSON

Published: March 22, 2007

Wolfgang Puck, the Los Angeles chef whose culinary empire ranges from celebrity dinners at Spago to a line of canned soups, said yesterday that he would use eggs and meat only from animals raised under strict humane standards.

With the announcement, Mr. Puck has joined a small group of top chefs around the country who refuse to serve foie gras, the fattened liver of ducks and geese. But Mr. Puck, working with the Humane Society of the United States, has taken his interest in animal welfare beyond ducks.

He has directed his three companies, which together fed more than 10 million people in 2006, to buy eggs only from chickens not confined to small cages. Veal and pork will come from farms where animals are not confined in crates, and poultry meat will be bought from farmers using animal welfare standards higher than those put forth by the nation’s largest chicken and turkey producers. Mr. Puck has also vowed to use only seafood whose harvest does not endanger the environment or deplete stocks.

“We decided about three months ago to be really much more socially responsible,” he said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “We feel the quality of the food is better, and our conscience feels better.”

Many chefs at high-end restaurants, some smaller food-service chains and grocery chains like Whole Foods have refused to buy meat and eggs unless animals are raised under certain conditions. In 2000, McDonald’s became the first American food company to impose minimum animal-welfare standards, like increasing cage size, on its egg producers. But Mr. Puck’s program goes much further than most corporate animal-welfare policies, and he is the flashiest culinary name yet to join with animal rights groups in the movement to change farming practices.

Mr. Puck’s ventures include 14 fine-dining restaurants mostly on the West Coast. The flagship is Spago in Los Angeles, which helped him become the nation’s first celebrity chef. He also runs more than 80 Gourmet Express restaurants, many of which are in airports, and sells frozen pizza, soups, kitchen cookware and cookbooks. Mr. Puck estimated his companies’ value at $360 million.

Since 2002, at least one animal-rights activist group has tried to persuade Mr. Puck to stop using foie gras from ducks that are force fed extra amounts of grain to fatten their livers and veal from calves chained to small crates and fed a liquid diet to keep their flesh white and tender.

The group, Farm Sanctuary, protested in front of Spago and started a Web site called wolfgangpuckcruelty.org, which has since been taken down. Mr. Puck dismissed those efforts and said he decided to make the change as a result of a few trips to large-scale farms, discussions with the Humane Society and a desire to mark his 25 years in the business with something more significant than the kinds of big parties he is used to holding for the Oscars.

“I have been telling people we have to stand for something for the next 25 years,” he said. “It’s time for us to make a statement and a time for us to see how we treat what we eat.”

Mr. Puck said prices would increase only a few percentage points on some items.

As many as 98 percent of eggs come from chickens kept in banks of small cages to facilitate mass production, said Diane Storey, a spokeswoman for United Egg, which represents most major egg producers. She and Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, which represents major producers of chickens for meat, said their groups had science-based animal welfare certification programs that used humane and ethical guidelines.

“We applaud the fact that he sells a whole lot of chickens,” Mr. Lobb said. “But we think our program is very progressive and he should look at ours before he goes off with the Humane Society.”

via http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/dining/22puck.html

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

Published: January 26, 2007

CHICAGO, Jan. 25 — The world’s largest pork processor said on Thursday that it would phase out confinement of pigs in individual gestation crates over the next decade, a move animal welfare advocates said would end one of the cruelest practices in the agriculture industry.

The processor, Smithfield Foods, which raises sows at 187 farms in eight states, said it would replace individual metal cages with pens where the sows would be housed in groups, allowing more mobility.

Animal welfare activists praised the move. “This is perhaps the most important moment in animal welfare in the agribusiness sector in 50 years,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States.

The Humane Society and others have long criticized the use of gestation crates. The sows spend up to three years continuously reproducing — much of the time confined in stalls where they cannot turn around — before being slaughtered. Veal cows are confined to two-foot-wide crates for four months and then slaughtered. Hens spend about a year laying eggs in “battery cages” — where they do not have room to flap their wings — before they are slaughtered.

But the confinement of breeding pigs to two-foot-by-seven-foot metal cages “is the most intensive and longest that any animal in agriculture is subjected to,” Mr. Pacelle said.

Animal welfare groups have successfully pressured universities and retailers like Whole Foods and Ben & Jerry’s to ban the practice of buying eggs from companies that confine hens in battery cages. But the groups have had less success in the United States in persuading meat processors to change their practices.

The European Union decided in 2001 to ban the practice by 2013. Ballot initiatives to ban the practice in Arizona and Florida have been successful, and Mr. Pacelle said animal welfare activists have planned initiatives in at least five other states.

Smithfield had been studying the issue for more than two years and decided to phase out the stalls after customers like McDonald’s began asking questions about the confinement practices, said Dennis Treacy, the company’s vice president for environmental and corporate affairs. Smithfield has been researching penning systems at hog farms in North Carolina.

“We didn’t do this in reaction to activists’ requests, and no customer said they would take away business if we didn’t do this,” Mr. Treacy said. “We are trying to be proactive and respond to what we think the customers want.”

Smithfield has not determined how much the transition will cost. The pork industry has come under pressure because of record-high corn prices that have driven up the cost of feeding hogs by 30 percent in the last year.

“This will not overly stress our system,” Mr. Treacy said.

Smithfield, which had revenue of $11.4 billion in 2006, raises 14 million hogs in the United States each year and processes 27 million hogs into pork products, for a 26 percent share of the market.

via http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/business/26pigs.html

Food With Integrity means working back along the food chain. It means going beyond distributors to discover how the vegetables are grown, how the pigs, cows and chickens are raised, where the best spices come from. We learn how these factors affect the flavor of the finished product. And what we can do to improve it.
Take our carnitas, for example. In pursuing new sources of pork, we discovered naturally raised pigs from a select group of farmers. These animals are not confined in stressful factories. They live outdoors or in deeply bedded pens, so they are free to run, roam, root and socialize. They are not given antibiotics.
Consequently the pork they produce has a natural, moist, delicious flavor. We think it tastes better and is better for you. Our customers love it. And because they do, we buy all we can. By creating a market for meats raised in a healthier environment, we make it worthwhile for these farmers to raise even more. That’s how Food With Integrity works for everyone.
Today we’re doing the same with new sources of chicken, beef, beans, avocados and even lettuce. We’ll be doing it with every item that goes into our menu.

via http://www.chipotle.com/images/integrity.pdf