Ethically sourced meat

devildog

'Holding pen that causes the most stress' if only it was just that!!
How about cigarettes being stubbed onto pigs faces and them being punched/beaten with sticks and kicked during their final few minutes alive. How about those that were so badly beaten that legs were broken and then they were dragged by their ears in those final minutes. How about those many that are not correctly stunned. nevermind the issues re their welfare at the farms!!

Again, don't get me wrong I do not have a problem with animals being raised and killed for meat but don't let us kid ourselves that this is done to an acceptable standard on the whole.

I also appreciate that slaughtermen undertake a job that is not very nice and dangerous too and there will be some out there that do this job dilligently but let's not forget that this job is pretty undesireable and many 'lowlifes' work there too who actually enjoy making the animals suffer.

redlady_1

This wasnt about giving up meat completely and whilst I appreciate there are inhumane practices what I want to do is to minimise the risk of abuse.

I have a rabbit in the freezer (OH loves it) and have eaten game having been brought up in the country. Where I live now game is easy to source but I am not keen on it. I want to preserve my bacon sandwiches really

Taxsaver - there is so much red tape that surrounds this but it is the smaller abbatoirs that I think are a good thing. It gets away from this mass production.

devildog

Totally appreciate your sentiments as that was exactly how I felt until I realised that actually there are virtually no ethics involved.

LOL there isn't actually many veg I like either so it has been a steep learning curve for me

Mojisola

devildog wrote: »

Again, don't get me wrong I do not have a problem with animals being raised and killed for meat but don't let us kid ourselves that this is done to an acceptable standard on the whole.

I don't believe this is right. On the whole, standards are kept to. In any industry, there will be people who don't work as they should. Look at what happens in some care homes!

Poor practices in some abattoirs shouldn't be used to condemn them all. If you have an ethical farmer who is taking his/her own stock to the abattoir, you can trust that he/she will be constantly checking that stock is being handled correctly, if only because the quality of the meat will be badly affected by bad practices.

Mrs_Chip

I don't buy cheap meat, I only by FR chicken, pork and bacon, I ony buy british meat and whenever possible I buy from a reputable butcher who can tell you where his meat has come from.

I would rather go without meat than compromise this, but that is just me, I appreciate others have a different perspective. I think we eat too much meat generally, and it is perhaps better to eat less but better produced meat. I love meat, but I don't have that strange idea that a meal is only a meal if there is meat in it!

Bella56

That Piper's Farm link is so interesting, thank you. I had no idea chicken should be hung for 2 weeks on the bone before processing.

In the film Our Daily Bread, they show the process of chicks to frozen chicken and it was so appalling. The people packaging the live chicks were working with thousands of crates of birds trying to jump out, and the way they slammed the pull out drawers shut, no doubt killing some whose heads were trapped out, was insane. There was no feeling or emotion, they were just processing thousands of animals all day long. In the end the adult chickens were hoovered onto a conveyor belt before slaughter, and I won't even go into that as the animal slaughtering in that film still haunts me.

There is a reason some meat is cheap. Corners will have been cut at every opportunity for mass production.

cooking-mama

Hi redlady-1...you might find some useful info in this discussion from the food shopping board.. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3020758

redlady_1

Order has been placed with Piper Farm so I will report back on how it tastes.

Just to let you know they are not organic because they refuse to send their animals half way up the country to an organic abbatoir. Instead the animals go to a local one 8 miles down the road which is set in a field and so the animals know no different. They go in one by one. The chickens are dispatched at the farm itself.

I am seriously impressed so far and whilst it is frighteningly expensive if it tastes as good as their customer service I will be back!

HelenYorkshire

Sounds good!



In reply to some of the other posts, a slaughterhouse does have a certain aroma, there are strange noises, whether the animal would be more stressed than e.g. being transported to market I don't know. The ones I have had experience of take certain animals at certain times. Pigs were done first to minimise waiting (noting their intelligence); and I never dropped any stock off when there was more than one (or one group) in front of me in the queue.

Wig

devildog wrote: »

Wig-"Some of the 'high credited' plants such as those accredited by the Soil Association were no better than the non-organic ones" source Animal Aid. Giving anything a 'label' means nothing anymore..

I presume you mean Abbatoir plant? As I said, I know nothing about that side of things.

But organic reared animals are gauranteed to have better minimum welfare standards -whilst they are on the farm- than non organic. And of all the organic standards, The Soil Association is the best, the figures and standards are all listed on their website and when you compare them to the other organics and non organic standards you will see the difference. So the Soil Assoc label really does mean something when you see it. What means almost nothing IMHO is the RSPCA label on food.

I can imagine that any abbatoir has a difficult job ensuring all animals are stunned properly. What I would find difficult to believe is that a soil assoc organic farmer would allow their animals to suffer at the end if there was anything they could do to stop it.