Lidl/Aldi meat- animal conditions better?

ginger_nuts

Rave wrote:

Lidl quite clearly sell battery and free range eggs seperately. Incidentally, my wife bought some extra large eggs from the market on Christmas Eve, they reckoned to be 'farm eggs' and had the address of a company in Dorset on them. The codes on them started 3-DE - I.E. battery eggs from Germany! I gently told her off, although they tasted alright and despite being massive were the same price as Lidl's medium free range eggs.

It seems that a lot of their beef comes from Ireland (at least it does in my local).

some ASDA & Sainsbury beef is Irish beef .It is often relabelled as BRITISH beef .

Sarahsaver

as for the lidl xmas geese, all geese are free range;) afaik

superscotsman

Sarahsaver wrote:

as for the lidl xmas geese, all geese are free range;) afaik

Well of course they are. Unlike chickens, geese won't put up with any nonsense!

moggins

I don't know about the chicken but I bought 2 of the sirloin steaks last week and they looked exactly like top quality beef should look, it was a dark red colour with fat marbled all the way through the steaks, the taste was incredible. At £2.29 for 2 decent sized sirloins it looks like we'll be eating these for some time to come

Newbird

Moggins - was that at Lidl or Aldi?

I know the fresh chicken at Aldi does not contain extra water and growth promoters etc. It is well priced too.

ladygrey_2

does anyone know if the wines are good at Aldi, the prices are good but how is the quality?

Lydia_2

The wines at aldi are good if you choose carefully. Look at the percentage of alcohol. The better ones have a higher percentage.

amosworks

I've been buying meat from my local Lidl for some years and have always been most happy with the quality of it. I only buy free range items where marked, regardless of my commitment to moneysaving, as I think it's plain cruel to keep an animal locked up and force grown for the sole purpose of its consumption

But since reading some of the comments here, I'm beginning to wonder whether the meat is as good (for the animal) as I might have been led to believe. I think I'm going to look to start supporting my local butcher soon in light of this, better safe than sorry I suppose.

https://www.bigbarn.co.uk rocks

competitionscafe

This report from Ethical Consumer (Dec 03/Jan 04) gives Lidl and Aldi bottom ratings for factory farming and Lidl also gets bottom rating for 'animal testing' and 'other animal rights'. No supermarket gets the top rating, while Asda, Budgens, Co-op, Kwik Save, Marks & Spencer, Netto, Somerfield and Waitrose all get a middle rating for factory farming. Their overall best buys for all ethical criteria were Budgens, Co-Op and Sainsbury's.
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/magazine/buyers/86/supermarkets.pdf

This survey is a bit older (2001) and does not feature Lidl, but the best rated supermarket was Marks and SPencers, followed by Waitrose.
http://www.ethicalinvestors.co.uk/news/supmart.pdf

Personally, I prefer to stick with local butchers and mail order suppliers for meat - for animal welfare reasons but also because they are more likely to treat the meat properly (hang it for sufficient time, butcher it properly, not add water to it, etc) all of which will affect the eating quality.

If you do buy meat from a supermarket then lamb is probably the best option as in general it is the least intensively reared farm animal and British lamb is usually of good quality.