The last two episodes of Hugh's Chicken run ended on Wednesday and brought about a very sobering atmosphere and feeling of true reality. The series ended with the man himself declaring that while the people of Axminster had made a great start in to accepting free range as the standard, there was still a huge way for their Chicken Out! campaign to go. It was encouraging to see how readily some people took to the challenge put before them, but this was unfortunately outweighed by peoples vindictiveness towards the "rich" and irrational use of excuses (see my blog post below)

The second episode was the slowest of the three but the one that showed the most impact on the residents of Axminster. Detailing the stage of the chickens growth from chicks into chickens that truly had very little space to move, it was the part of the show that needed little in the way of gimmicks. Bringing in Jamie Oliver to hopefully help his campaign was about as "celebrity" as the proceedings got for the whole run of programmes. The people that entered the shed, in general, were horrified at what they were seeing, and also no doubt smelling and hearing. The peoples disdain for what was going on only helped serve how unreasonable those were that entered coming out stating "I don't see a problem".

To me what became abundantly clear from the second episode, and partly from the first, is how much of a task it must be for those that run these types of farms. Emotionally in dealing with animals in such a way, and also pragmatically in sticking to the vast amount of regulations, no doubt also with the added concern about animal activists around the country. It was at this point that I think I truly began to understand Hugh's original analysis that you had to lay the blame for the situation on supermarkets more than I originally thought, as I can't understand how any of these types of farmers would choose to do this if free range was the most profitable, or at least *as* profitable, route.

Moving in to the third episode started to really unearth the arrogance and lack of reason in the general (ashamedly to say, mostly working class) population. Unquantified attacks on Hugh and his motives, arguing that he was only doing this to advertise his own store, a ridiculous claim when despite people ludicrously claiming that he sold free range birds for £22 he didn't even give his own shop prices to quell that fear. In fact at only one point did he even seem to be promoting his own store and that was when he was running his own stall on the final day of the campaign. Anyone watching the program could see the strain the experiment was taking on him and the ignorance of those around him and of the national media was astounding.

It also didn't help that some people that agreed to sell free range products, such as the kebab shop owner, decided to not get into the spirit of promoting it and instead fudged their maths to create high profit margins. It really was a shame that some people clearly have a thing against the promotion of a more "expensive" meat.

And ultimately we saw the usual ignorance in terms of budgets, as I've said detailed below, a non-argument as far as I'm concerned after looking in to it. But the fact that people around the local pub could be so blasé as to say that if you're concerned about chicken welfare "don't eat the fucking things", and that until posh sods like Hugh bring their prices down they'll not listen to anything they say, just went to show how irrational "the poor", that spend their nights in the local pub throwing their money away on booze, can be when it comes to money.

All in all it was amazingly eye opening. I'd seen documentaries before where some covert scenes were shown from broiler houses so I knew what to expect. What I never expected was to truly see how emotionally this would take a toll on the "normal" person, nor to see the stark differences. But on the other side I also never expected to gain a little respect for the industry despite it's questionable practices, nor did I realise that for a long period, despite conditions still being bad, the amount of space chicks have isn't as terrible as made out...it's not like they are stuffed together unable to move for all their life, more like just half of it. Obviously this is still terrible, but it was good to get some true perspective and context about the process in its entirety.