It’s been more than 15 years since my show Hugh’s Chicken Run exposed the treatment of the UK’s most farmed animal. The month after it aired, sales of factory-farmed chickens plummeted and free-range birds flew off the shelves as the public began to contemplate the short and brutal lives of animals they had seen only when headless, plucked and smothered in clingfilm.
The programme was broadcast on Channel 4 to millions of viewers, and I hoped it would spark a nationwide revolt against the “two for a fiver” birds in supermarket fridges, the insultingly low price for which could only be achieved by systematic cruelty. I had hoped that beaming footage of these abused chickens into people’s living rooms might make them think twice about their dinner, and shop differently for ever.
