Chicken - moneysaving or ethical?

davidspd

Help, i'm in a chicken quandry.

Chicken is the only meat DH will eat and while one half of me wants to be money saving and buy economy chicken, the other half thinks i should be buying free range.

What do other OSers do?

spiddy100

I buy free range most of the time now and we only eat chicken once every 2-3 weeks now. Occasionally I buy the cheapo stuff if we've been missing it.

If you buy a whole one you can make it go as far as possible and get a few meals out of it, including making stock afterwards. Would that make it a bit more money saving?

dannahaz

I buy free range.

Non free range chickens have miserable lives. The really cheap chicken is pumped full of water.

I had a similar dilemma when my kittens had upset stomachs and the vet told me to feed them chicken for a week. I had to ask myself why I was buying free range chicken for our own meals, was it taste or was it chicken welfare. I realised it was chicken welfare, which meant the cats got free range chicken too.

There are plenty of other areas you can compromise on if money is tight.

Appreciate lots of people may disagree, this is just my two penn'orth.

Penny-Pincher!!

Go to the supermarket in the evening and try to buy them yellow stickered

PP
xx

moggins

When it boils down to it, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says it all depends on what you can afford. If you can't afford to buy free range yet then don't feel guilty, once your finances are in better order then you can always upgrade

spiddy100

PS we get our free range ones from a local farm shop, they usually have special offers on and they're not that much more expensive than the supermarket ones - they work out about £4 for a chicken

Hels_Bells_3

We only have free range chickens and eggs but thankfully my local sainsburys always has loads of both in the reduced sections - it might be worth stocking up on the free range chickens when you do see them reduced - and then you're being both ethical and money saving

jmarko

free range all the way. here's the mse ways of justifying it...

1 - could you bring up a chicken, look after it, feed it, give it space to roam around and then have it slaughtered and prepared for £8? No, then it's a bargain - buy the freerange one.
2 - could anyone do it for £2? If someone says they can, then they're going to be treating that animal *very* badly, it'll have no access to natural light or space and likely be fed really bad, cheap things and live most of its life knee deep in sh*t.
3 - the money we all save on other things means that we can afford to put a bit of that towards something good - for ourselves or others. and a few quid so that an animal has a decent life isn't too much money and it's something good for us and someone(thing) else.

just my tuppence worth!

jmarko

Tustastic

Go for the freerange chicken unless it is going to drive you into terrible debt. Get a whole one so that you can use every morsel then bless its bones as you use them for stock.:)Good meat is delicious, so cook it with love and care when you do have it, and include lovely, healthy, meat-free dishes on your meal plan to help make the pennies go further. HTH:)

thriftlady_2

Free-range for me too.
Sometimes, though I buy barn reared chicken from my butcher. It is produced by the same farmer who rears the free-range chickens I buy. I am assured by the butcher that these birds live in reasonable conditions ie; not kneeling in their own filth, with room to flap and perch etc. Some barn reared birds have better lives than others. Tbh I'm not sure how you can be sure which are which

We eat free range chicken every 2 weeks or so and stretch it as far as possible.

Have you tried OH on wild rabbit ? Ethically sound and mild meat like chicken in texture and about £4 a pop from a good butcher - just ask (they come oven ready and the butcher will joint it for you - how's his French ? call it casserole du lapin

scholt

I believe that if you can't afford good meat then don't eat meat at all. Others have already given the ethical argument so I won't repeat it here. I have been vegetarian for 20 years (I'm 25) and it has to be one of the most money saving things you can do!