Sunday, April 22, 2007

Ham comes from chickens ...

A third of primary school children think oranges grow in Britain. Almost half believe margarine comes from cows, and a quarter assume bread is made from potatoes or rice.

A third of primary school children think oranges grow in Britain. Almost half believe margarine comes from cows, and a quarter assume bread is made from potatoes or rice.

The findings are revealed in a survey of children aged 8 to 11 by the polling organisation Mori. Half of the 356 children questioned did not know ham was produced from pigs. A third thought it came from chickens, 10 per cent assumed it was from cows, 5 per cent from sheep and 2 per cent deer.

The survey was commissioned by the National Farmers' Union (NFU). It approached the makers of Little Red Tractor, a BBC2 programme for pre-school children, who agreed to include scenes explaining where food comes from in the new series. Future episodes have storylines about how potatoes grow in the ground and the process for making cheese.

Bev Wilson, campaigns manager at the NFU, said: "It's sad so many children don't fully understand the origin of their food. They need a basic understanding of where food comes from."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ham doesn't come from chickens??

dom said...

No silly, the Jews wouldn't eat chickins if it was made of ham , so it must come from milk.