Making it a positive 2016

One of my Christmas presents this year was Jamie Oliver’s new book, Everyday Super Food. As well as having some delicious-looking recipes, it also contains some advice for healthy living. One of the things recommended was the YOU-app for small steps in mindfulness, food and movement for health and happiness.

The basic idea is to make a positive change to your life through “micro-actions”, which are quick and simple to perform, rather than setting big goals that are hard to meet. The actions come in four flavours: mind, food, move and love. So far, I like it, and it’s inspiring me to make 2016 a year of making positive blog posts wherever possible. The first is this: check out the You app. It’s free!

Creamy mustardy lentils with bacon and squash

This is another repeat favourite, based on a Waitrose recipe, Rosemary-roasted squash with ham hock and lentils. Aussies are more into cow than pig products, so it’s not so easy to get decent ham/bacon etc. However, this recipe does just fine with some fried bacon chunks rather than the (cooked) ham hock in the original. The original also used frozen squash.

You can pre-roast the squash for this recipe.

Ingredients

• ~1kg Butternut Squash
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
• 250g puy Lentils
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 100ml Single Cream
• 180g pulled ham hock or cubed bacon
• 25g sunflower seeds
• 20g pack flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 100g frozen peas

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200C, gas mark 6. Cut the butternut squash into large chunks (e.g. quarters) and spread in a single layer on an oiled baking sheet. Sprinkle with the chopped rosemary. Bake for around 45 minutes until tender and lightly browned, tossing in the oil about halfway through. Cut into something resembling even cubes. Bitesize chunks, if you will. (Don't obsess too much - there's a chance the squash will, well, squash to mush anyway.)

2. Cook the lentils in a pan of boiling water for 15–18 minutes until tender. Drain.

3. If using bacon, fry the bacon cubes in a bit of oil until cooked.

4. Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan and cook for 5–10 minutes until good and soft.

5. Stir in the mustard, cream and some seasoning and bring to simmering point.

6. Stir the cubed squash, drained lentils, bacon/ham hock, sunflower seeds, parsley and peas into into the cream sauce.

7. Heat through gently until everything is hot.

8. Check seasoning and serve.

Tastier than it looks (with my food photography skills, at least) and makes good leftovers too.

Quick and easy pasta with Italian sausage and kale

Coles magazine quite often delivers the goods in terms of convenient and tasty meals that I can actually be bothered to make - and are quite forgiving to deviations from the recipe. This is my variation on Curtis Stone’s “Penne with sausage and kale” from April 2015. I’ve made this a few times now, so it’s time to post it so that I don’t have to dig out the magazine. (Yes, I really am that forgetful!)

Ingredients

• Coles finest Italian sausages. (Any tasty quality sausage will do but these have fennel in, which adds an extra dimension.)
• Bunch of kale, stalks removed and sliced. (Recipe calls for half but I go for a whole bunch - it cooks down.)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed.
• Small/half glass of dry white wine.
• Jar of tomato pasta sauce. (The recipe calls for 1.5 cups of passata but then you are left with lots of passata.)
• 300g pasta. (Recipe says penne. I tend to use small spirals… for everything.)
• Parmesan, salt, pepper to serve.

Instructions

1. Get a large pan of salted boiling water going to cook the pasta. See below for the timing you’re aiming at. (Err on the side of too late, I think - the rest can simmer for a bit longer.)

2. Remove the sausages from their skins and fry them over a medium-high heat, breaking them up with a wooden spoon/spatula as you go.

3. Add the kale and garlic and cook until the kale is wilted. If you are using a whole bunch, like me, you may need to add it in a couple of batches - unless you have a very big pan. Don’t worry: it cooks down a lot.

4. Add the wine and the tomato sauce. This time, we used puttanseca sauce, which was quite olivey. If olives aren’t your thing, you might be happier with a simple tomato or tomato and basil sauce. (You can just use passata as in the original recipe, of course!) The sauce had a few cherry tomatoes in it, which was nice. This recipe would work well if you roasted some cherry tomatoes and chucked them in too.



5. Bring to a simmer and cook for a few minutes until at the desired consistency. Hopefully, your pasta should be done by now. Drain and toss with the sausagey tomato goodness.



6. Season to taste and serve. Sprinkle with grated parmesan and black pepper. This makes enough for four adults, or two good dinners and lunches.

And, of course, it passed the Arthur test. (No, he didn’t get any.)

Easy, tasty chicken & chorizo minestrone

I like cooking that essentially consists of chopping stuff and then adding it to the pan in the right order. This recipe hits that nail firmly on the head. It also fills the kitchen with delicious smells. It got the cats interested, anyway.

If in Australia, make sure you get a continental chorizo for this recipe, not the inferior “chorizo primo” that seems to be common.

Serves: 4; Cooking: 30 mins

Ingredients

• 1 chorizo sausage, finely chopped.
• 1 brown onion, finely chopped.
• 1 carrot, peeled & finely chopped.
• 1 courgette (zucchini), ends trimmed, finely chopped.
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed/grated.
• 400g can diced tomatoes.
• 500ml chicken stock.
• 1 large chicken breast. Cut into chunks if very large.
• 110g risoni pasta.
• 40g spinach, finely shredded. (I put in a bit more, roughly torn, which seemed fine.)
• Lemon zest, to serve.
• Crusty bread, to serve.

Instructions

1. Heat a large saucepan over a high heat and cook the chorizo for about 5 mins to brown and release the tasty oil. Transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon.



2. Add all the veg (onion, carrot, courgette & garlic) and cook, stirring, for 5 mins until the onion softens.

3. Add back the chorizo, plus tomatoes, stock and chicken. Bring to boil and then simmer for 10 mins or until chicken cooked.

4. Remove the chicken and coarsely shred. Return to the pan with the pasta. Cook for 6-7 mins until pasta is tender.

5. Remove from heat. Stir in spinach and season with salt and pepper.

6. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with lemon zest. Serve with crusty bread. Yum!

Two (very) good eggs at Two Good Eggs

I’ve blogged before about a mighty fine brunch at Two Good Eggs in Surry Hills. Yesterday, we went back for the first time since then and I am happy to report that nothing bad has happened to the place in the intervening year.

This time, I went for a special of “Chorizo Hash Brown Stack” (or something to that effect). I don’t often take photos of my food but sometimes it is so handsomely presented that it’s hard to resist. Today was one of those times (even if the resulting photos is a little blurry):

It tasted as good as it looked, with two perfectly cooked eggs. A year is too long to wait between visits, so I’m aiming to find an excuse to go back a bit sooner next time.

Love chocolate? Love ice cream? Love coffee? You'll love a Magnum Espresso!

I do like good chocolate, ice cream and coffee. What could be better, then, than something tasty that combined all three‽ Behold! The Magnum espresso

Magnum vanilla ice cream is not spectacular but it is good - and surrounded by really good dark chocolate. (It makes me wonder whether you can just buy bars of the stuff.) Stick in some swirls of coffee syrup and you’ve got a winner. It’s chocolate with a splash of coffee, rather than coffee with a splash of chocolate - so don’t be too disappointed if you are after COFFEE!

According to their Facebook page, it’s a limited edition. I hope its not too limited!

Easy (and delicious) slow cooker beef chilli

Autumn has arrived in Sydney and with the dropping temperatures - we sometimes need two layers now! - there is an increased desire for warm, comforting food. We’ve therefore been seeking out recipes that are either made or can be adapted for the slow cooker. Today’s was an adaptation from a taste.com.au recipe for shredded chilli beef. (It was too yummy to remember to take a nice photo once dished up, so a photo of the pot will have to do!)

Ingredients

• About 1kg beef chuck steak, cut into pieces and large bits of fats removed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 brown onions, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, grated
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1.5 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 690g jar passata (plus/minus) + water (see below)
• 1 tbsp finely chopped pickled jalapenos
• 3 dried bay leaves
• 2 tins of red kidney beans

Instructions

1. Season the beef with salt and pepper and brown in the oil. Our slow cooker has a “sear” function, so I used that. If feeling lazy, I’m sure you can skip this step.

2. Lightly fry the onions to soften. Again, I used the slow cooker “sear” function.

3. Bung everything except the kidney beans in the slow cooker. Use a bit of water (50-100 ml, maybe) to get as much of the passata out of the jar as possible.

4. Cook on low for 6-7 hours.

5. Drain and rinse the kidney beans before adding around half an hour from the end. (My slow cooker had already flicked to "keep warm" so I added them and put it back on low whilst the cornbread was baking.)

6. Serve with Firecracker cornbread and sour cream. (My wife made the cornbread, so I can’t brag about that.) It was also be good with rice, tortilla chips, or just about anything of that ilk.

Easy and delicious!

Edit: as I almost did in life, I forgot the kidney beans!

Aussie vs British/Irish Fish ’n’ Chips

We celebrated the start of the Australia Day long weekend by driving out to Brighton le Sands on Botany Bay for some fish and chips on the beach after work on Friday. I grew up in a seaside holiday town, so I am no stranger to fish and chips. Here, then, are my reflections after a year and a bit in Oz. It boils down to this:

In the UK and Ireland, it’s all about the chips. In Australia, it’s all about the fish.

Chips. Aussies can’t do chips. Well, OK, that’s a little unfair - and they often produce something considerably superior to “fries” - but they cannot do chips as well as the Brits and Irish. There is a reason that “chippy” or “chipper” are common affectionate slang for fish and chip shops - you cannot beat chips from a good chippy. Big, fat, slightly greasy chips with salt and vinegar. Yum. It may not be the most healthy thing but it’s one of the few food items that I really miss.

Indeed, the rest of the fayre on offer is somewhat secondary and fish are only one of a number of different accompaniments for your chips. Pies, kebabs, scampi, burgers and all sorts of unhealthy items like battered sausage (or nowadays, a battered anything) are on offer.

The best chips ever? Well, Leo Burdock in Dublin stakes a good claim on that one.

That's not a chip...

That's a chip!

Fish. As indicated, the average British or Irish fish and chip shop does not focus so much on the fish, and there are usually only 3 or 4 different types of fish available (cod, haddock and some kind of flat fish such as plaice or sole being most common, I think) in addition to scampi. In Australia, the choice of fish can be quite overwhelming, and will include several other kinds of seafood (calamari, prawns, oysters etc.).

On Friday, for example, we went to Ocean Heart Seafood who offered five kinds of fish plus other seafood, grilled (barbecued) or battered and fried.

Conclusion. The overal verdict, therefore, is a draw. If you fancy chips, then Australia’s not the place. (Although the wdespread availability of chicken salt does go some way in terms of compensation.) However, if you want a good selection of really fresh, tasty fish, I think Australia is the winner. (Unless, I suspect, you are away from the coast - but more that 85% of Aussies live within 50km of the coast.)

Best Christmas stocking chocolates ever!

Like many - most? - people my age who grew up in the UK (and Ireland, I think), Christmas stockings are synonymous with Cadbury’s chocolate coins. However, this year was destined to be a Christmas without them, for two good reasons:

First, there was the report earlier this year that Cadbury are no longer making them. This had a considerable public backlash, as captured on Buzzfeed. (The author made one error in his post, ending: “However, all hope is not entirely lost, you can still buy different chocolate coins at supermarkets and pound stores around the country.” Sorry, but other chocolate coins suck in comparison.)

Second, Australian Cadbury’s chocolate is rubbish. (Sorry, Aussies, but it is. We’ve done blind taste tests and everything.)

Fortunately, Santa came up with a much better idea this year: spiced chocolate almonds from Haigh’s Chocolates.

These sound pretty amazing but are even better than they sound: an almond, encased in milk chocolate, encased in white chocolate and dusted with spiced dark chocolate powder (cinnamon, cloves, cardamon and star anise.) One to look out for next year!

Two good eggs (and some mighty fine pork belly)

Today we went for Sunday brunch at Two Good Eggs cafe in Surry Hills, central Sydney.

A good Sunday brunch is probably my favourite meal of the week - not that we have brunch every week - and so it was exciting to go to a cafe that specialised in breakfast and brunch. Starting with a very good flat white, complete with little wafer, we were not disappointed.

The Two Good Eggs menu is pretty diverse and manages to hit both the usual favourites, such as pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, or Eggs Benedict, plus a whole bunch of creative dishes too.

I opted for something that I would never make myself at home: Roast pork belly with poached eggs, caramelised onion and sourdough toast. Delicious! The two eggs were indeed good, cooked to perfection and served atop tasty, crispy pork belly and sweet, sticky caramelised onions. The photo did not do it justice but an attempt seemed obligatory for something so good.

I was lucky enough to sample a couple of other dishes too: Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon and avocado, and “Goats on toast”, a vegetarian dish of “Warm Trinity Cellars French goats cheese with drizzled honey and smashed walnuts on sour cherry fruit toast”. Both were very good, although I’m glad I went for the pork belly.

Not quite as cheap or close as the amazing sandwiches at One Six Nine cafe in Randwick, but I am already looking for excuses to go back! Top notch nosh.

The world's best bacon sandwich?

We’ve been to One Six Nine Cafe in Randwick a few times for brunch or lunch and never been disappointed. The menu is good and all the food is made with quality ingredients in decent portions, so great value for money as well as taste. The sandwiches are particularly excellent. Today, I had the bacon, rocket, avocado, tomato and spicy slaw and I can’t think of how it could have been made better. (A bigger mouth, maybe?) Highly recommended if you find yourself in Randwick for lunch!

22 grams of coffee heaven and the brilliant Cafe Brioso

One of the noticeable things about Sydney is the quality of coffee. Unlike the UK, which is dominated by several big chains (Costa, Starbucks, Nero etc.) and has quite variable coffee outside of these chains, the Sydney cafe scene is still ruled by small independents and they are all good! One cafe worth a particular mention is 22 grams on High Street in Randwick, which is just down the road from where we spent our first month in Sydney. Their coffee rates as some of the best that I have ever had - and they do a mean cinnamon bun too!

It would be wrong to mention good coffee, however, without a shout-out for Cafe Brioso, which is more commonly known as the “Library lawn coffee cart” (above). Situated next to the Library Lawn (below), this is my favoured spot for a flat white on campus. Although quiet in the photo above (as I try to avoid taking and posting pictures of strangers), the coffee cart gets pretty busy at peak times but the crew of baristas are awesome and churn through the orders like a well-oiled machine. It’s good coffee, too! My only regret is that, as it’s takeaway only, I alway have a lid, which covers up the pretty “barista art” in the crema/foam. Somehow, it’s nice knowing it’s there, though - a sign, I think, that the barista cares!

One Six Nine Cafe - setting the bar high for Sydney brunch

Australians are big into their brunch (I have been told) and today we had our first proper brunch in Sydney, at One Six Nine Cafe in Randwick, which we discovered thanks to Urban Spoon. (I neglected to take any pictures at the time, so I pinched the one to the left from their gallery.)

We shared the smoked salmon brunch - smoked salmon on sourdough toast with ricotta, avocado and a poached egg - and the day’s special: peanut butter pancakes with maple syrup, grilled banana and crispy bacon. Amazing. The portions were just right (for me) - large enough to feel that I was getting value for money (and full!) but not obscene - and the food was all top quality. The coffee was good too!

I suspect that this is the first of many brunches to come but it might be a hard one to beat! Fortunately, One Six Nine is within walking distance of where we'll be living but not too close. (The temptation might be too strong for our wallets!)

As an added bonus, they also served Tap™, which I had seen advertised outside a cafe before but did not really understand what it was. It turns out that it’s not a crazy gimmick/scam (along the lines of Dasani) but is instead an attempt to save resources by encouraging people to drink tap water, something that I can happily get behind!

Flavoured Freddos

In the UK, Freddos represent a very cost-effective source of sensibly portioned Cadbury’s chocolate. At 20p for 20g, they have a weight/cost ratio that is not seen again until the dangerously big 100g+ bars.

In Australia, basic Freddos are not quite so good - they’re not so cheap for one thing but, more importantly, unadulterated Cadbury’s chocolate is nowhere near as nice. Perhaps for this reason, Cadbury’s in Australia adulterate their Freddos with additional flavours a lot more than the UK (where I’ve only see Caramel). Two such examples are “popping candy” and “strawberry pond”. Whilst the former is just odd, the latter is actually very nice - a bit like a giant Strawberry Cream from Quality Street.

When is a Moro not a Boost? When it's an Aussie Cadbury's Mars Bar!

One of the pleasures of moving to a new country is getting to grips with it's idiosyncracies, especially when the familiar gets a touch of the unfamiliar. This is particularly true of foodstuffs, I think. One such example is the Cadbury's Boost and Cadbury's Moro.

When I first moved to Ireland, the chocolate bar in the UK known as a Boost (formerly a Biscuit Boost, I believe - the original being coconut -) was called a Moro. The exception, I think, was the Boost Guarana, which contained Guarana - whatever that is. I was therefore pretty conditioned to the fact that a Boost and Moro were the same thing.

In Australia, they are not the same at all! A Boost is like a Boost in the UK. (The texture might be a bit different but that might also just be the heat.) A Moro, on the other hand, is more like a Mars bar, with nougat and caramel. The texture is a little different and it's nicer than a Mars bar, I think.

Cadbury's chocolate itself is rather disappointing compared to its British or Irish namesake - more like Rowntree's chocolate. (It reminded me of non-Cadbury's Easter Eggs.) In bar form, however, with other non-chocolate components, it is nice.

So there you go. Next up (for Cadbury's): Freddos.

Beyond herbicides for weed control

Reported in last week’s Science News article, The War Against Weeds Down Under, Australian farmers have been getting creative with non-chemical warfare against the weeds that blight their island continent.

Increasingly, weeds are becoming resistant to herbicides and switching to a new herbicide often just results in new resistance after a few years. On top of this, there is generally a progression into nastier chemicals - and more of them - as favoured herbicides lose effectiveness, which is clearly not good for sustainability or the environment.

Australia has particular problems of pest plants with multiple herbicide resistance - one of the worst is a species introduced for sheep feed, Ryegrass - and have been pioneering new versions of more old-school solutions: physical warfare. One of the simplest is just burning the weeds after harvest to destroy their seeds. This is pretty effective - for Ryegrass, at least - but has some disadvantages including loss of nutrients from burning.

An alternative with particular promise is going sheerly physical and grinding weed seeds out of existence. As published in Soil Science last year, Australian farmers and scientists have converted mining equipment called a “cage mill” or “impact crusher” into the “Harrington Seed Destructor”, which is able to destroy a reported 95% of Ryegrass weed seeds. As well as being more effective than burning, all the nutrients from the destroyed chaff is put back into the soil, presumably reducing the need for fertiliser into the bargain.

“Nothing will survive in there…”

Picture from: Walsh MJ, Harrington RB & Powles SB (2012). Harrington Seed Destructor: A New Nonchemical Weed Control Tool for Global Grain Crops. Crop Science 52(3): 1343-1347.

Another advantage of physical destruction over chemical attack is that it seems more difficult for the weeds to fight back. Thanks to the awesome power of Natural Selection, it is probably only a matter of time before resistance evolves to any given herbicide. Whether they could evolve to have seeds small/tough enough to survive the Harrington Seed Destructor is less clear, especially without compromising their competitive advantage. Either way, it’s useful to have another weapon in the arsenal, even if it is a bit pricey at the moment at $A250k. It’s also good to see that future weed management could potentially be effective and environmentally friendly. Hopefully, other countries will follow suit.

Wagamama for breakfast!

I know it’s a but cliché to take photos of your food and blog about them but sometimes you just feel compelled to - and this is one of those times! I did not realise that Wagamama did breakfast until I was passing through Heathrow Terminal 5 this morning, looking for some sustinence. It turns out that not only do they do breakfast but they do a wide range of interesting and tasty dishes.

I had the okonomiyaki:

a japanese-style egg pancake filled with bacon, chicken, prawns, shitake mushrooms, red cabbage and leek, served with aonori, katsuobushi, spring onions, wasabi mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce.

It was amazing - as pretty as it was delicious!

Next time we're considering brunch in Southampton, I'm going to hope that Wagamama is serving its breakfast menu!

Hugh's pasta with new potatoes, green beans and pesto - a one pot classic!

We’re fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Every Day cookbook in our house and yesterday saw another fine discovery from within its hallowed pages. If you are after something quick, easy and delicious, look no further than Hugh’s “Pasta with new potatoes, green beans and pesto”.

As the name suggests, the main ingredients are new potatoes (about 75g per person), pasta (about 75g per person), green beans (about 50g per person) and pesto. He has instructions to make your own pesto but we just used Sacla and it was delicious enough. The final ingredients are a handful of green olives, a good grating of parmesan and a healthy dose of black pepper.

One of the best things about this recipe for me is that it is all cooked in one pot and can be prepped at a leisurely pace as you go. Simply set a large pan of salted water boiling and chop the spuds while you wait into “thin chip” sized pieces. Bung in to boil with the pasta (10-12mins) and chuck in the green beans about 4 minutes from the end after trimming and halving them. Drain, allow the steam to evaporate for a couple of minutes and then mix in the pesto and season with black pepper to taste.

To finish off, roughly chop the green olives and sprinkle on top, followed by some parmesan. Delicious! (And only one pot to clean!)

Chic and cheerful at Urbun cafe, Cabinteely village

Continuing the good coffee theme, earlier this week we had lunch at Urbun cafe in Cabinteely, south Dublin. As befitting a cafe that started life as a market stall, the interior is simple but comfortable and, for want of a better word, wholesome. The knives and forks, for example, were brought to the table in a reused jam jar. (I think the decor might "urban chic" but I'm not really sure - I won't let that uncertainty interfere with a blog post title, though!)

The food was very good. I had the special - a tasty sweet potato and bacon frittata - and also got to sample some of my wife's club sandwich. The frittata was good but the sandwiches at Urbun are pretty special, served on thick slices of lovely fresh bread - highly recommended.

After lunch we had a coffee and that was also excellent. Their barista, Vini, had won third prize in the Irish Barista Championship and did not disappoint. Good stuff!

Are "Happy Eggs" really happy? (And are Viva really pro-welfare?)

Like many people, I am concerned by animal welfare but also rely on official organisations like the RCPA and their Freedom Food campaign:

When you see the Freedom Food label you know that animals have been kept to strict RSPCA welfare standards. The standards cover the whole of an animals’ life, not just their time on farm. A stimulating environment and plenty of room to move around are just two of the many benefits.

Freedom Food can also be an affordable ethical choice, as they approve indoor as well as free range and organic farms. So, make one small change to your shopping and one big change to farm animal welfare.

With the horrors of battery farms so well documented, we are especially watchful when it comes to eggs and chicken, and have been buying “Happy Eggs” for some time. In their welfare page, The Happy Egg Co. state:

All our farmers are dedicated to the wellbeing of their hens and every farm has acres of outdoor space for our hens to roam free, plenty of playhouses, trees and foliage for them to explore and rummage around in, as well as indoor space with nest boxes to give them a little bit of privacy when they’re laying.

I was therefore shocked to read a Viva investigation of “Happy Eggs” farms, which is still doing the rounds online, in which they report:

“… a very different story – one of disease, incarceration, mutilation, short lives and electric shocks.”

It makes for some pretty uncomfortable reading and, if true, really is shocking. If it’s true. The thing is, the expose by Viva is not necessarily neutral - Viva is the “Vegetarians International Voice for Animals”:

“Eating meat; fish and dairy causes environmental destruction, damages human health, contributes to global hunger and inflicts immense suffering on billions of animals across the world.

Viva! believes that the solution to all these problems is in our own hands: the best way to stop the destruction and the cruelty is to stop eating animals now – go vegetarian, or better still, vegan.”

I actually agree with a number of their points but not to the point that I think going vegetarian is the answer. We should eat less meat, certainly - not every day - and there is no need for the cheap, budget meat that floods supermarkets. Animal welfare is very important - how an animal lives is more important in many ways than how it dies. (In nature, animal death is rarely pleasant.)

The worrying thing, however, is not that Viva appears to have an agenda to discredit poultry (and other meat) farming but rather than the RSPCA and Freedom Food considered legal action and accused “Viva and Channel Five of reporting out of context and of withholding important information about animal welfare.” The lack of context included one of the farms being “under veterinary supervision for an outbreak of erysipelas” - a disease that “can unfortunately cause high levels of mortality as well as feather loss”, which accounts for some of the unpleasant observations.

That’s not the worst of the counter-accusations, though:

But the RSPCA is seemingly most angered by the fact that Viva had sat on its findings for three months, only releasing them in early October - to conincide with British Egg Week.

“If Viva had footage that demonstrated a problem as far back as July, then it should have been reported immediately so that the appropriate action could have been taken,” said the statement. “It is disturbing that this information was withheld when there was potential for on-going suffering.

“As a result of the issues raised above and the manner in which Channel Five provided evidence, we are seeking legal advice.”

A separate statement from the Happy Egg Co said it regarded the happiness of its hens as its top priority and it had immediately put in place an audit of all its farms.

So, who to believe?

The closest I have found so far to neutral coverage is on the Spud and Spike blog, which (as far as I can gather) is a personal blog by a mum on the adventures of her two kids. In a post from about a year ago (the expose itself is from 2010) - “Our visit to a Happy Egg Co Farm!” - the author reports conditions much more akin to the Happy Eggs & RSCPA point of view.

Indeed, as she points out, Compassion in World Farming awarded a second Good Egg award to Happy Eggs “in recognition of the packer’s commitment to high animal welfare”. According to the CIWF website:

“Compassion in World Farming was founded over 40 years ago in 1967 by a British farmer who became horrified by the development of modern, intensive factory farming.

Today we campaign peacefully to end all cruel factory farming practices. We believe that the biggest cause of cruelty on the planet deserves a focused, specialised approach – so we only work on farm animal welfare.”

I still find the Viva report a bit worrying - some of the welfare breaches (or “non-compliance issues”) reported were confirmed by the RSPCA - as well as some of the other reports that the RSPCA Freedom Food campaign is not really doing what it says in terms of the depth and frequency of welfare checks. That said, when reports seem to be coming from biased and unreliable sources, it is hard to know what is true and what is not.

If Viva really did sit on their footage for two or three months then they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Prolonging unnecessarily animal suffering is bad enough when it is done for food or for profit. If it is being done purely for publicity by an organisation that is nominally pro-welfare, that really would be unforgivable.

For now, I am going to continue eating Happy Egg Co. eggs - and I think I will be getting my future welfare information from Compassion in World Farming.