I’d rather eat Beefy’s birds than battery hens

I WOULD much rather eat a partridge than some sad, six-week-old chicken stuffed with chemicals.

And if its death has come about as the result of guns, dogs, tweed and a decent amount of sloe gin, so be it.

Surely, flying into a hail of shot is a far better death than being strung up and decapitated in the slaughterhouse? Apparently not — or at least not if you are Radio 5 Live host Rachel Burden, who attacked Sir Ian Botham over his scheme to turn game killed on his land into casseroles and curries to provide food for the homeless.

Rachel’s problem seemed to be that the birds were being killed for sport. But given that 40 per cent of children don’t actually know that eggs come from chickens, and almost a quarter believe that turkey and steak come from pigs, isn’t it about time we grew up and started being more honest about the food we eat?