Page 4 - National Poultry Newspaper

Relaxed Sommerlad chickens on pasture.
So, back to Background Briefing.
“I mean, if we’re going to eat something, if we’re going to take something’s life and eat it, I believe that it should be afforded certain respect.
“It was sort of like being slapped in the face with f lavour.”
Page 4 – National Poultry Newspaper, August 2022
* continued P6 www.poultrynews.com.au
Wake up to ABC Radio National
n Never be bored in bed before breakfast again
SUNDAY mornings I lay in bed listening to Background Briefing on ABC Radio National.
lad’s chickens.
Milking Yard Farm be-
Cant
Comment
by BRENDON CANT
Investigative narrative journalism at its best, it doesn’t shy away from tackling rural issues and gently coaxes you to think deeply about the subject it covers deeply over a half hour or so.
gan eight years ago when Bruce Burton, a former air force pilot, was deter- mined to raise chickens ethically in the forest that backed onto his property.
By way of contrast, my working week starts by waking up alongside – not literally – Patricia Karve- las on RN Breakfast for what’s much more hard- core.
with long strong legs and powerful feet.”
they couldn’t perform the way nature intended out- side.
“We needed to find a breed or type of chicken that would be amenable to living in its natural habi- tat, because that’s what the forest is – its natural habitat,” he said.
Anyway, on a recent cold wintery Sunday morning here in Western Australia, I was wrapped in my doona and rapt in the story covered on Background Briefing.
“Slower growing, ath- letic and selectively bred over 15 years to thrive in the Australian climate.”
“I have a set of values and ideals around how an- imals should be treated,” Michael said.
Bruce took inspiration from France, where the Bresse chicken lives for up to 12 months, giving the bird a rich and deep taste.
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It also featured upfront Michael Sommerlad – the doyen of pasture-raised purpose-bred chickens and the ethical farming thereof.
He was conscious of the way nature helps itself – “I consider my father one of the genuine environ- mentalists,” Michael said.
“So, in the end, my wife and I decided to bite the bullet.
“The first thing we no- ticed was how survivable they were in that very critical first four weeks,” Bruce said.
I’ve referenced him and his eminently edible Som- merlad chickens in this column before.
Michael travelled across Australia, visiting poultry farms and hand-picking a variety of chickens based on characteristics that would flourish in the heat of northern Queensland and weather the winters of Hobart.
When Bruce had tried to raise the commercial varieties, he’d lost almost half of his flock.
I was first alerted to the man and his flock when reading The Ethical Om- nivore by Laura Dalrym- ple and Grant Hilliard of Sydney’s Feather and Bone butchery fame.
Michael spent his child- hood observing the va- riety of characteristics across the diverse breeds of his farmyard chickens, fascinated by the way they interacted with the Australian environment.
But he only lost 4 per- cent of the Sommerlad breed.
They describe Sommer- lad chickens thus, “Unlike the white broiler chickens that struggle to remain agile after eight weeks – let alone cross the road – Sommerlad birds are a riot of colour and are built to run, hunt and explore,
His dream was to make the perfect chicken for Australian conditions.
“There were actually nine different character- istics, and I used 12 to 15 strains of breeds from all over Australia,” he said.
After running all the costs while operating at small-scale, he had to charge roughly 10 times more than a supermarket bird.
Below is most of what went to air and pricked my ears the other Sunday.
He was looking for birds to raise slowly, mean- ing they’re processed at roughly 10 to 12 weeks, instead of four weeks like the commercial birds.
Essentially, it was about the bureaucratic barriers faced by small-scale live- stock producers, with a focus on chicken farmers.
In the 1970s, on the family farm in Tenter- field, a young boy named Michael Sommerlad dreamt of raising the ideal chicken.
“I wanted to see optimal animal welfare outcomes, not acceptable animal welfare outcomes.
He was eventually put in touch with Michael Som- merlad.
“He was able to look at his surroundings ho- listically to try to work his agricultural practices with what nature was pro- viding.”
“And we started down the path of developing our own bird.”
That vision would see him not only breed chick- ens faster than his father but become an expert consultant on chicken ge- netics.
Like a chicken detective, Michael would examine each breed’s rate of feath- ering, leg length and chest width.
“We didn't even know if people would like the fla- vour or the taste,” he said.
And his dream was real- ised ... until he was con- fronted with an industry resistant to change.
“The gene pool has to be broad and deep enough to be able to respond to challenges that we haven’t yet faced.”
Then, Bruce ran into a problem with his process- ing facility – they were scaling up.
When his father was forced to sell his farm, Michael decided to join the commercial industry.
Equipped with his ge- netic recipe for a perfect Australian chicken, he ap- proached major figures in the industry.
“They said, ‘Look, we’re growing at such a rate, we simply can’t let you use the boning room,’” Bruce said.
The experience was a stark contrast to the birds he raised throughout his childhood.
He would have to find a new facility to process his chickens.
“It was interesting for me, having that back- ground to see how di- vorced modern commer- cial production was from that diversity,” he said.
But he said he was stonewalled.
Small-scale farmers from across Victoria say the lack of access to abat- toirs is costing them their livelihood.
“I still recall the day I walked into that first breeder shed and was pre- sented with 11 or 12,000 birds in a 130-metre long shed.”
A handful of small-scale producers embraced his vision and began raising his chickens.
“They all looked almost identical.”
They were trying to improve the industry, but state regulation got in the way.
Michael thought he was going to faint – “It was a violent shock to the sys- tem.”
“I have seen both at a state and local level where matters of interpretation have, in the best-case scenario, slowed things down... worst-case sce- nario, stopped them alto- gether,” he said.
Victorian regulator PrimeSafe would have oversight of the facility that would cost him a for- tune.
He said that while the conventional industry has fine-tuned the production of cheap animal protein for the public, he was uncomfortable with the birds’ behaviour.
Milking Yard Farm in central Victoria is one of those worst-case sce- narios.
Food safety regulation in Australia tightened in the early 2000s, follow- ing an e coli outbreak that led to the death of a four-year-old in South Australia and a hepatitis A outbreak that affected 400 people in NSW.
They lacked the natural instincts he was used to – to run, hunt and forage in the wild.
Four months ago, the heritage-breed producers sold the last of their Som- merlad chickens to the public.
The two commercial meat breeds in Australia – Ross and Cobb – had been genetically fine-tuned through selective breed- ing to the point where
They were one of the first farms in Australia to raise Michael Sommer-
In Victoria, the Meat Authority was overhauled and, by 2003, had been completely replaced by a
“Diversity is the key in any sustainable eco- system or environmental situation,” Michael said.
To Bruce’s surprise, consumers were eager- ly buying his chickens throughout Victoria.
“On every occasion, my approaches were pooh- poohed out of hand as un- necessary,” Michael said.
In the entire state of Victoria, only one abattoir will accept small-scale contracts and their auto- mated chain doesn’t cater to the variety of sizes in the Sommerlad breed.
But they too hit road- blocks.
So, Bruce was at a cross- roads – shut up shop or build his own abattoir – which would cost about $500,000.