Supermarkets Vs Butchers

A._Badger

geordie_joe wrote: »

No, they ordered products, those products arrived along with paperwork stating they were exactly as ordered. The only way a supermarket could know if the products contained anything that was not ordered would have been by opening the boxes and testing them.

I've cut your comment for space - the point remains and the response is simple. The supermarket not only employees extremely well paid specialists, food scientists and highly qualified technicians but it has all the resources of a multi-million pound company at its disposal. Of course it should test what it receives!

It is every bit as culpable as the fraudulent butcher.

A._Badger

geordie_joe wrote: »

Nope, Stephen is correct, I've just read back through all your posts.

Really? Then why not quote me having said it?

catwoman73

The fact is that supermarkets put enormous pressure on suppliers to reduce costs, so that the supermarkets can make a lot of money, while pretending to be cheap.

The only way for this to be done and for the suppliers to stay in business too, is for corners to be cut, and ever cheaper suppliers to be used, including foreign low welfare meat and scabby unwanted stray Irish horses (yes, really. It was on the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme).

That is why I buy meat from the butchers not the supermarket. Sometimes it is cheaper and sometimes it is a bit more expensive. I don't care. Yes, I have been tempted by the very cheap offers on pork and lamb over Easter, but I didn't buy any, because someone, or something, probably not the supermarkets, would have been losing out over that.

I want to buy meat from British animals that have been treated fairly, bred by farmers that have a chance of making a living. I trust local farmers and butchers to do this. With the possible exception of M&S or Waitrose, I don't trust supermarkets to do this, and that's before you even get to 'the horsemeat scandal'.

sillyme673

I try to buy meat from local butchers and two organic farm shops both with Food hygiene level five, yes I have checked. But doesn't everyone sometimes buy a bargain from supermarket.
Re horsemeat if it was cheap enough my parents would buy it:(

stephen77

catwoman73 wrote: »

The only way for this to be done and for the suppliers to stay in business too, is for corners to be cut, and ever cheaper suppliers to be used, including foreign low welfare meat and scabby unwanted stray Irish horses (yes, really. It was on the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme).

l'.

There are other ways to save money besides cutting corners.


Most of supermarkets own brands are using more and more British meat.
Foreign meat - does not automatically mean lower welfare. Quite often it can be high welfare as they have cheaper over heads etc so they can afford to invest in high welfare standards.

stephen77

A._Badger wrote: »

No there isn't - you made up that silly exaggeration in an attempt to justify your position.

What people are saying - certainly what I am saying - is that a good butcher will usually sell better meat than a supermarket and that meat is more likely to be local and reliably sourced.

And if you don't believe that, then you either haven't found a good butcher, or wouldn't know high quality meat if you were offered it.

Not making it up. In general on this forum, not just this post. If you read between the lines there are many claiming super markets are bad, with Tesco taking the brunt of the criticism. Aldi and Lidl are some where in the middle. With local small stores being the brilliant.


As for not knowing quality meat when I see it. May be you need to get better at cooking it.

[Deleted User]

Not all local butcher shops are hunky dory. Some round here are supplied by wholesalers out of grubby industrial units on rundown trading estates.

Says a lot about the quality of the product.

[Deleted User]

On what evidence do people argue that supermarket meat is inferior? Without evidence these opinions are nothing more than prejudice. When snobs are put to the test in blind trials, they invariably can't tell the difference between the stuff they reject and the stuff they claim to prefer.

If the people who reject supermarket meat are doing so out of concern for their welfare, as they would have us believe, how much fat, sugar, salt, processed meat, fibre, fruit and veg etc. are they consuming? How much exercise do they get? All factors which are proven to have health benefits thousands of times greater than any real or imagined difference between supermarkets and independents.

Many of the contestants on here are food snobs who claim to be eating a healthy diet, and just look at the state of them.

ska_lover

stephen77 wrote: »

Not making it up. In general on this forum, not just this post. If you read between the lines there are many claiming super markets are bad, with Tesco taking the brunt of the criticism. Aldi and Lidl are some where in the middle. With local small stores being the brilliant.


As for not knowing quality meat when I see it. May be you need to get better at cooking it.

Yes I agree, there is definately a massive sway in these boards for supermarket meat being the stuff of devils, and Butchers providing a highly more superior product at a much cheaper rate.

Butchers? No local butchers around here, never has been. Would have to make a special effort to go into the city centre -no time, patience or inclination to go there

Huge 'keeping up with the jones effect' on these boards - some folk like to be seen to feeding their family at the fraction of the cost of their peers, and all locally sourced and organic don't you know, oh and I can feed a family of ten on 50p a day - and we all have the time to go around every supermarket in the town sourcing the cheapest bargains on every single item we may need to purchase - we have so much time on our hands as we don't work, we live off the land and have our own chickens and sew our own pants.

Then someone like you Stephen comes along and says something to the contradictory and one of the Jones will leap on you like you are some kind of fool for having a different opinion. But you cannot have a debate with them, they start throwing insults - but it says far more about other people than it does about you

Hats off to you sir

snowcat75

stephen77 wrote: »

Not making it up. In general on this forum, not just this post. If you read between the lines there are many claiming super markets are bad, with Tesco taking the brunt of the criticism. Aldi and Lidl are some where in the middle. With local small stores being the brilliant.


As for not knowing quality meat when I see it. May be you need to get better at cooking it.

For someone who is directly involved in the food industry,

Supermarkets have spent the last 30 years pushing supply prices lower and lower, whilst driving there own profit margins higher. When UK ag couldn't supply for the price they imported.

UK agriculture is transparent, The regulation is overwhelming, the reason the supermarkets were involved in the horse meat scandal was down to the fact they were buying cheap mostly from sources in the eastern Europe, and really were not giveing a dam, blameless they were not.

The Fact that someone like Mcdonalds who pay UK producers decently, but who are very particular about where there product comes from, never became part of scandal proves the point.

BTW Aldi are pretty good, they sell nearly 100% UK produced meat, Tescos have been a crock of !!!!! for years, repackaging to sell as UK produced, misleading labels, all sorts.