Artist Ian Tavill Joins Forces To Highlight Animal Welfare

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 18, 2008 – ARTIST IAN TAVILL JOINS FORCES TO HIGHLIGHT ANIMAL WELFARE

Manchester artist Ian Tavill has joined the battle with Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, the RSPCA and the animal rights group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) to get consumers to eat more welfare friendly reared chicken by highlighting some of the welfare issues in poultry production by producing a 90x90cm mixed media work of art on canvas called Chicken Run where actual blood has been mixed in the pigment. A chicken stands to the left surrounded by walls all the area is splattered with debris, paper, splattered eggs and faeces. The Chickens neck has been severed and the blood has splattered the surroundings. A gruesome tale of existence forced upon these poor defenceless creatures. The farming takes place in large windowless sheds, often containing tens of thousands of birds, the result of the rapid growth and lack of space, the birds are prone to lameness, heart and respiratory problems. It is claimed by the CIWF that one in twenty dies because of heart attack, hunger, and suffer stress and unsanitary conditions. These birds which have been bread to grow more quickly “Frankenstein chickens” typically, a chicken raised in this way reaches a finished weight of 2.5kg within nine weeks and then is sold in our supermarkets.

The campaign by the celebrity chefs has been backed by a similar move by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A hard hitting series of programmes which was released earlier this year saw the purchasing of the big four supermarkets, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrison’s alter their tactics after the UK consumer willingly embraced free range eggs followed by chickens. As a consequence a number of chicken farmers have gone out of business but, it is not necessarily the farmer that is wholly to blame when the supermarkets sell a whole chicken for “less than a service station cappuccino” Sainsbury’s sold whole chickens for as little as £3.50 for two. Ian Tavill is currently working on a number of other animal welfare projects which are to be released in the near future.  If the campaign is to permanently alter the way that the consumer considers choice then the public reminders need to remain active for some time to come.