Is wild red grouse more ethical than chicken? | Lucy Siegle

Red grouse can never be raised in captivity, but that doesn't make the wild variety an eco winner, says Lucy Siegle

Why did the red grouse cross the road? I'm still working on the punch line. Battery-reared red grouse will never be on the menu as they can't be raised in captivity, just home-grown birds from British uplands. It sounds gloriously ethical. They are even on offer at frozen food giant Iceland, which doesn't provide a great deal of information as to how and why, nor which UK uplands the birds are from. This season 200,000 birds will be shot, netting the rural economy 100m. At a glance it's a lot more ethical than, say, importing battery-farmed poultry from Brazil.

But not so fast. The first downside is the tax breaks under the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) system for moorland farmers. According to tax justice campaigners, these end up in the pockets of super-rich landowners. Also, grouse rearing involves the burning of our precious uplands. A recent report led by the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science takes issue with this form of ancient land-management technique where heather is burned to create new shoots that feed grouse. Over 10 years from 2001, researchers mapped 45,000km^2 of British uplands. Burning was detected in one-fifth of all areas, increasing by 11% every year, and was most egregious in so-called protected areas.