I’m fed up with food labels that come with a side-serve of guilt

When you read the news that 800,000 chickens have been slaughtered in a bid to curb an outbreak of avian flu in Victoria, what’s your first thought: Poor little chooks didn’t live long enough to be killed later, or I’d better run and buy eggs lest they become as scarce as bog roll during COVID?

No matter how big a carnivore you are, the mass slaughter of animals surely still tugs at the heartstrings. It’s often said that if we had to kill the animals ourselves, there would be far more vegetarians. We appease our empty consciences and full tummies by insisting the animals we eat and the produce they provide aren’t mistreated before we remind them who’s top of the food chain.

Free-range socialising precedes the roasting. Credit: Jessica Shapiro

Providores sense we want to know more about the ethical origin of our food, so are working to provide us with chirpy diary entries regarding what ends up on our plates. Poultry, meat and fish companies increasingly love to include a cosy story in their product details so that we’re almost down there on the farm with them or stretched across a hay bale or swimming like fresh, cold salmon in the icy fjords of Norway.

I noticed this while prepping a meal lately. There were lots of things that should have upset me more, like the state of world politics, US gun laws, flammable cladding on high-rise buildings … yet it was the plastic label on the chicken that was thawing on our kitchen bench that undid me. It read: “Our chooks forage and socialise outdoors”. They socialise? And we’re just about to stick them in an oven and eat them? What kind of monsters are we?

A bit of background. I’ve always been a pussycat around animals. I cried at Bambi, sobbed at Born Free, was catatonic listening to Puff, the Magic Dragon. It’s got so bad over the years that now I flatly refuse to go to any film that has an animal in it – even when they’re happy films. In fact, happy films are worse because I know that the hairy/feathered/scaley hero will eventually die once the film’s over and nothing will be joyful again.

So the shocking information on this chicken label leads me down a rabbit hole of animal product advertising. According to many brand labels, the free-range Aussie chook lives a heavenly hennish existence where the sun always shines, the grass is green, and the big bad wolf is kept at bay – probably via electric fencing.

Illustration: Simon Letch. Credit:

Lilydale, on the label of its bulk breast fillets, spins a nice yarn: “At Lilydale, our chickens are raised by farmers who really care about their welfare.” Stop right there! They really care about their welfare – and then they give them to us to eat?! Proceed. “They are fed a nutritious diet and – once adequately feathered at around 21 days – can leave their barns during daylight hours and access fenced outdoor range areas, shade huts, hay bales and ramps.” So the little birds are having a scratchingly good time. And then we …

The Bare Bird company goes one step further, sending a message from the chook itself, possibly on its own pack of tenderloins: “Naturally raised amongst Central Victoria’s golden fields, I welcome the morning with sunshine and exercise. I love to forage, roost, relax and wrap up my day with a wholesome diet of seeds, grains and legumes.”

You are adorable, little chook, but I really wish you hadn’t told me all that to my face. How am I ever going to swallow your body part now? And how did you get your tongue around “legumes”? But do go on. “I am naturally healthy, 100% antibiotic free, and I certainly wouldn’t touch hormones because my body is a temple, and so is yours.” Jeez. And you’re worried about my body. What a sweetheart.

There’s something very wrong about all this. Yes, I know that if we must eat meat, we must look after the animals providing it. That’s a given and a necessity. But trying to paint a rosy picture for customer carnivores is as hypocritical as Meghan Markle wanting Archie to be a prince. As an advertising strategy, it’s plain misleading, I reckon, and rather than make consumers feel good, is more likely to make them feel sick as a dog. It only took a glance at his own little lambs frolicking in the sun to turn Paul McCartney into a veggo. I don’t think this is the companies’ intention.

It gets worse. According to an RSPCA website, Knowledge Base, free-range meat chickens must stay indoors for their first three weeks until they’ve grown enough feathers to handle the great outdoors. At four to six weeks of age, they’re then shunted off to the great big chicken coop in the sky. Let’s do the maths. That means that all this good-life, legume-pecking, beak-in-beak fun stuff down on the ranch might only last one week of the chook’s little life. (The natural lifespan of a hen is up to 10 years, says the RSPCA.)

I could go on about the sad stuff and the Orwellian euphemisms that industry gives for sending chooks to their final non-resting place – “partial depopulation”, “thinning out”, “multiple pick-ups” – but, like the film Babe, this story is G-rated. I’ll just say that you’ll need to assume your favourite yoga position and start chanting “om” to read elsewhere about their “humane” killing. In my book, it should be no less than by lethal injection from an anaesthetist with a bedside manner. True, that would be expensive and labour-intensive, but so much kinder.

But back to meat labels. My favourites are the ones that get straight to the nitty-gritty, happily ignoring that the chicken breast tenders I might have eaten two weeks ago, when I was a carnivore, were once a chirpy sentient being who enjoyed bathing in the sun. “At FroPro, we understand the irresistible appeal of crispy fried chicken … Made using 100% hormone free Aussie chicken breast and coated in our famous High Protein Southern Coating. You get all the flavour and crunch without the guilt!”

Without the guilt? Now that’s a food label.

Jo Stubbings is a freelance writer and reviewer.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.