Supermarket Prices for British Meat

Nile

Apologies if this has been discussed previously.

In the BBC2 Country File programme on Sunday 1st May, they featured supermarket meat prices.

The presenter bought three types of pork from one supermarket and then traced the meat back to the original farms.

One type (a) was organic with the soil association logo.

One type (b) had the red tractor logo and the other type (c) had no logo. All the pork was British.

What they discovered was that the (b) and (c) type pork was from the same farm............yet the price of the (b) pork was higher than the (c) pork. Why? The price is higher for (b) because you're paying extra for the cut and packaging......... NOT the farming.

Save money when you buy British meat, the basics range (no logo) is produced to the same standards as meat with logo's like the red tractor.

Pal

This is the problem with many kite marks and logos like "farm assured": They mean absolutely nothing, and are actually just marketing tricks rather than actually being designed to inform the consumer.

When you say the latter two (B and C) are produced to the same standard that is true: They are all antibiotic ridden, tasteless crap farmed in a manner that is exceptionally cruel to the animals. Customers don't complain because they don't like to think too much about what they are eating and where it has come from. Instead they prefer cheap meat, judging everything on price instead of quality.

A good comparison is with free range eggs. Many people buy free range eggs because of animal cruelty issues but then happily buy 99p chickens that are reared in conditions far worse than battery hens.

The soil association logo is a reasonable one because it gives the organic certification, and it is a requirement that the animals are given access to the outdoors. This in itself means that the animal is slower growing, slaughtered at a later date, is less full of stress hormones and antibiotics and tastes a lot better. That is worth paying for in my opinion. Even if you can't afford organic, it is worth going for free range in order to remind yourself what real meat tastes like.