Chicken Out! blog by Tim

Another new blog by the gorgeus Timmy!!!

Dear friends,

You may remenber that back in January we lent our support to the excellent Chicken Out! campaign (http://www.chickenout.tv/)- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's campaign urging higher welfare conditions for chickens farmed in the UK, and fairer conditions for the farmers who rear them.

Chicken Out! has already had a big impact, but the vast proportion of chicken bought in the UK is still intensively farmed. Rearing chickens using intensive farming methods is, in our opinion, a barbaric way to treat animals.

A commitment from supermarkets to sell only chickens that have lived in conditions that meet the RSPCA Freedom Foods standards would make a massive difference to the way we buy and consume chicken in the UK. No supermarket has more power than Tesco, who control over 30% of the groceries market in this country. Hugh recently submitted a resolution to Tesco urging the supermarket to improve their minimum welfare standards for the chicken they sell.

This resolution should come up for consideration at the forthcoming Tesco Annual General Meeting, but even though the resolution was submitted before the deadline, Tesco have sent out their AGM papers without including the resolution on the agenda. In order for the resolution to be included, Tesco say, Hugh will have to pay 86,888 euros that it will apparently cost to post revised papers to all their shareholders. He has to pay that money by midday on Wednesday.

Undeterred, Hugh is attempting to raise 86,888 euros that will enable the message of Chicken Out! to be heard by the shareholders at the Tesco AGM. He has put in a huge amount of his own money, and is also trying to raise funds by auctioning various prizes on the Chicken Out! website. We've contributed a pair of our Keane gold discs, along with a small donation, which we hope will help a little. As far as the gold discs go I think it will be one that's inscribed to me and one that's inscribed to Richard, but we're still sorting it out at this very moment. For the culinary-minded among you there are some other brilliant prizes which may tempt you.

Anyway, I hope I've explained the situation reasonably clearly- it's a bit compicated! If you feel as strongly about this as we do, please sign up for the Chicken Out! campaign, or of course have a look at the auction prizes, or pass all this on to any you know who might be interested.

Thank you for reading this- we genuinely appreciate it.

Tim

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He's such a sweetheart. Apart from being intelligent, genius, handsome and sexy, he's very kind. I love his thoughts. Hope those two gold discs will be in good hands!

and please folks, sign up to this meaningful campaign!

Bye