Poultry World

I don’t know much about the poultry industry. This became very clear during my interview at Poultry World:

“How do you feel about the battery cage debate?”

“Well obviously I’m against large cages. Err, small cages. As I understand it, free range chickens can still be kept in cages though, as long as they’re over a certain size... isn’t that right?”

“No, that’s not right.”

Someone once told me the cage thing, possibly in a pub. I believed it, and didn’t care enough to ever check the facts. It wasn’t something I thought about very often. During the interview, it popped up in my memory for the first time in ages. This seemed like a good bit of luck, and I confidently reeled it off. They were not impressed.

The rest of the interview went comparatively well - I didn’t claim that chickens were mammals, or that a turkey was a female chicken. I’d give more examples, but these are the only two things I can think of that are stupider than what I actually said.

I wasn’t that upset, really. I already had some part-time work lined up (see next post), and am not that interested in poultry. I went to the interview partly out of curiosity, but mostly because I wanted to be able to tell people that I once went to a job interview at Poultry World.

A friend from college once had an interview at the Meat Trades Journal. (Their website is meatinfo.co.uk.) Poultry World is almost as good, and I still find it funny. During the interview, whenever someone mentioned the magazine’s name, I couldn’t help smiling.

I’d been sent two copies of the magazine before the interview. They asked me to “come in prepared to give a verbal critique of Poultry World magazine”, so I read them.

The June issue was filled with news from the Pig and Poultry LIVE 2011 conference. There was no theme to the August issue. Some highlights:

“Broiler producers have until the end of the month to return their Meat Chicken Notification Forms...” “British Turkey is rolling out its British Turkey Taste Challenge to regional county shows...” “...Gafoor Poultry won a Carcass Utilisation Award...”

My ‘verbal critique’ was as honest as I could make it. I said the mag’s coverage was comprehensive, but clearly not intended for the casual reader. I said it had a good mix of news and features. I did not say that the magazine is very boring indeed.

Despite my restraint, I don’t seem to have got the job.