9,000 chickens an hour: terrific

Let us take the chicken by the horns. Whether we like its methods or not, industrial farming is a goose that lays golden eggs, enabling humanity to soar considerably higher than a hen. And if Jamie Oliver or anybody else doubts it, they must have chicken dirt for brains.

Oliver's new campaign - or "Jamie's chicken crusade" - is to persuade Britain not to produce, sell, buy or eat cheap mass-produced chicken, but to go for "morally better" free-range birds. His new TV show promises to expose modern chicken farming, which fellow celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall calls "industrial savagery".

In fact, industrialised farming is feeding the world by turning chicken from a rare treat into an inexpensive everyday source of protein. Britain produces more than a million tonnes a year, mostly in factory farms that can kill 9,000 birds an hour. Globally, chickens now account for most of the 50 billion animals eaten every year.

This sounds like a success story to crow about. Yet such is the doom-mongering Chicken Little climate that it can now be seen as bad, even immoral. Sorry Jamie, but what we need is a more human-centred morality that puts people's needs top of the pecking order. There is a case for improved production methods that make meat taste better - but that is about making us happier to eat it, not producing "happier" chickens.