By far our most popular meat, Australians eat 42kg of chicken per person per year – ten times more than 50 years ago. Matthew Evans wants to know what this means for the chicken. When he discovers that chickens can live in cramped conditions in intensive farms, he realises how little consumers are likely to know about how our favourite meat is farmed. With the help of an ad agency he devises a stunt to get reactions from the public, which he then shows to a fast food chain to ask them to consider changing to higher welfare chicken.
Matthew Evans is a free-range pig farmer, but 90% of pigs we eat come from intensive farms, so Matthew sets out to find out how the majority of pigs are farmed in Australia. When Matthew visits an intensive farm, he discovers it is a complex business. Most farmers use small cages called farrowing crates, which are just big enough for a sow to lie down while her piglets suckle. They are designed to protect the piglets from being crushed by the sow, which happens more regularly on free-range farms. But is the confinement of the sow worth it for the sake of keeping more piglets alive?
For most of us, steak is the quintessential Aussie meat. But how much do we know about how cattle are farmed in Australia? Matthew Evans follows one cow all the way through the production process to discover how our favourite cuts are actually a tiny portion of the whole animal. He reveals how much land is being cleared every day so we can graze cattle, and the impact of 25 million cattle on the land. He also discovers that there is some game-changing research being done to make cattle farming far kinder to the planet.
