I'm amazed that anyone should be surprised that conditions are so bad, as Jamie, Hugh and Gordon have been saying this last week. It came as no surprise to me at all.

In a country that eats 850 million chickens a year, the supermarkets attitude is, as ever, 'stack em high, sell em cheap!'

In our nicely packaged world, it's difficult to relate the nice looking joint or bird we buy in the supermarket, to something that actually once ran around a field (or not in then case of battery chickens).

And this suits the multiple chains who are only interested in getting maximum meat for their money.

I can't stand the foul mouthed Gordon Ramsey, but I've always liked Jamie Oliver.

I like his attitude, his books are good reading, and also I've admired the way he started a campaign about the quality of school dinners, and the way he started the '15' restaurant, giving people a chance to get started on the working ladder.

And he's right to try to raise awareness of the conditions our meat is produced in - some of them are quite disgusting.

Here's a confession – On my 30th birthday (a few years ago now) I reckon I ate 2 whole chickens in a single day!

I'm not particularly proud of that!

I went to a beer festival at the Junction Pub in Polegate – at lunchtime I went to the pub over the road (when it was still a pub) and had a half chicken and chips. I returned to the beer festival, where there was a buffet with chicken sandwiches, legs and wings. Then early evening I had a chicken curry, and I followed the evening session with a chicken kebab on the way home. Happy days!

These days of course I'm much more responsible...

I try and stick to free range, but whilst I think it's laudable of Jamie, Hugh, Gordon and the rest (whatever happened to Delia?), it's the supermarkets that need to take a lead in this. They should say more than airy fairy platitudes about what they would like to achieve in 10 years time.

They should say quite categorically that a chicken raised in 39 days, that can hardly stand, never sees daylight and has to wallow in its own excrement, is completely unacceptable.

People will always buy cheap if it's an option, but will prefer to buy ethically if it's made just as easy.

Some things shouldn't be price conscious, and anything that once breathed is one of them.

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Ian writes his own blog at www.iloveeastbourne.co.uk