Chicken's back on the agenda for the British public. If you're still confused about what you're buying then here's what you need to know
This is the standard chicken. Around 90% of all British chickens - about 774 million birds each year - are produced according to Red Tractor's Assured Chicken Production (ACP) guidelines.
The fact is that most of our chicken is reared intensively indoors. What that basically means is controlling all aspects of a bird's life from birth to slaughter - including the space it has to move in, the amount of food it eats right down to the amount of light it is exposed to.
One of the major welfare concerns is 'stocking density' or how much space an individual gets. With the lower welfare standards found in some EU countries and elsewhere, birds may trample on each other and live their own faeces.
In Britain the Government recommends a 'stocking density' of 34kg/m² (about 15.2 birds per m²) for standard intensive chickens. If that's hard to picture then imagine an area slightly larger than that taken up by an office swivel chair. However apart from Waitrose and M&S, most supermarkets choose to stock at 38kg/m² (about 17 full grown birds to the m²). All legal and both better than new EU law.
About 90% of our chicken meat is produced in sheds and the bulk of it has the Red Tractor logo, telling you it has been approved by the Assured Food Standards. However, since Hugh and Jamie's chicken campaigns, changes in consumer attitudes have seen the AFS bringing forward changes in living conditions like reducing noise and smell, improving light levels and providing some sort of 'environmental enrichment' such as straw bales to allow the birds to perch on.
Talking of light, those of you who spend most of your day in a brightly lit office might appreciate this. Currently a minimum of '8 hours of natural or artificial light must be provided a day at a minimum of 10 lux' - or basically something a bit better than twilight on a clear night.
Find out about Hugh's latest chicken labelling campaign
Top chefs join forces for a season of hard-hitting shows in Channel 4's Great British Food Fight
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