'Hugh's Chicken Run' A Moral Dilemna for DFWs?

Softstuff

I think it's a hard decision and a guilt trip for those on a very tight budget, and most likely already feeling pretty guilty for other reasons.

Fair enough to say to maximise the meat you use with the old rubber chicken trick - but if you're already stretching a battery chicken across 5 meals there isn't much room for manoeuvre here aside from vegetarianism. Here a free range chicken would be over twice as expensive, though I agree it might go a little further, I can't see it going twice as far.

Right now I'll continue as I am, making 1 chicken do both of us for about 5 meals, making 10 portions of lasagne with 250g mince...We eat about 4 dinners out of 7 with meat and 3 vegetarian a week. When we're in a better position financially I'll have the luxury of being able to think morally about my food.

rog2

ZTD wrote: »

Not very appetising to us, but pigs like them.

Hence the saying 'As happy as a pig in !!!!!!' I suppose. :rolleyes:

But pigs are, biologically, very close to humans and susceptible to the same types of illness as we are - swill that has been left at ambient for three or four days is going to be so full of bad bacteria that it doesn't bear thinking about. :eek:

ZTD

postingalwaysposting wrote: »

to take it to another level ~ what red meat do you buy that is british.

The ones I do are. I buy from a farm shop, and to get there, you have to drive past the cows and other animals that are destined for the shop.

Learned a couple of things there:

1. Cows are nosey.
2. Geese have more road-sense than people.

fc123

Indoor reared pigs are worse. The UK banned sow stalls (all british pigs are outdoor reared now) but the leglislation put many of our pig farmers out of business as Tesco et al just imported cheap pork, bacon and ham from Denmark and Eastern Europe.

The customer has no idea and will often choose the cheaper option. If the supermarkets had just increased the price and stocked UK pig products, then, yes, they would be dearer (so become less of an everyday item) but do we really NEED all that cheap, inhumanely produced bacon and ham??

Plus I feel for the farmers.

My industry is currently being decimated by the cheap, fast fashion phenomenon. So what?? We get cheap stuff and it (artificially) keeps inflation figures down.

Skills are being lost all over the country but what happens when oil prices rise so much that we cannot afford to keep flying all this stuff into the country? Ooops getting a bit heavy here....
Nite nite

ZTD

rog2 wrote: »

Hence the saying 'As happy as a pig in !!!!!!' I suppose. :rolleyes:

But pigs are, biologically, very close to humans and susceptible to the same types of illness as we are - swill that has been left at ambient for three or four days is going to be so full of bad bacteria that it doesn't bear thinking about. :eek:

They eat carrion out in the wild, which will be in as bad, if not in a worse state. If it harmed them, then Mr Darwin would have stopped them doing it by now.

rog2

fc123 wrote: »

Indoor reared pigs are worse. The UK banned sow stalls (all british pigs are outdoor reared now) but the leglislation put many of our pig farmers out of business as Tesco et al just imported cheap pork, bacon and ham from Denmark and Eastern Europe.

My business was in supplying technology to the UK Meat Processing Industry, which, forgetting 'foot and mouth' and 'avian flu' took its biggest battering from the Supermarkets' decision to import cheap meat products from places where we have absolutely no control over the welfare of the animals.
Someone once suggested that Tesco should run the country, but, in my opinion, they already do. :mad: :mad:

rog2

ZTD wrote: »

If it harmed them, then Mr Darwin would have stopped them doing it by now.

Why? Was he a pig breeder as well? :rotfl: :rotfl:

ZTD

Softstuff wrote: »

Fair enough to say to maximise the meat you use with the old rubber chicken trick - but if you're already stretching a battery chicken across 5 meals there isn't much room for manoeuvre here aside from vegetarianism. Here a free range chicken would be over twice as expensive, though I agree it might go a little further, I can't see it going twice as far.

From this phrasing, it seems you haven't tried it.

penguin83

When I am in a better position financially I fully attend to buy 'happy' meat products and such like.

Unfortunately I cant afford to have morals just yet!.............

cinnabar

I found the programme and people's responses to this general debate very interesting. I was brought up on a small organic farm with all animals being as free-range as it's possible to be with hedge boundaries. My mum runs a wholefood shop locally and I've worked there in the past, help out now occasionally and will start working there properly in a couple of weeks. So I feel I have quite a bit of experience of 'ethical' food production. But on the other hand I haven't exactly lived by the principles i was brought up with, having chosen, mostly through budget constraints and availability, to buy battery produced meat etc.

It often does seem that the people making a fuss about this kind of issue are the people for whom paying an extra few quid makes little difference, but just recently due to my own financial circumstances I've become hyper-aware of how other people spend their money, and a huge range of people are quietly choosing to buy products that they consider more ethical. My mum's shop doesn't sell meat, but sells other animal-related products such as eggs, and I'd actually say that there are a lot of people on very low budgets who are choosing to buy free-range meat and dairy produce because they think it's more ethical, or better quality, or both.

My own feelings on this is that most people, given the chance to buy a chicken that has been treated badly or one that has had a nice life would go for the latter IF THEY WERE THE SAME PRICE. In my fairly extensive experience of both battery and free-range meat, free-range IS better quality - but of course if you're on a low budget (and even if you're not) there is a trade-off going on when you buy the product - is it worth it to you to spend the extra money to give a chicken better quality of life if it's ending up in exactly the same place as a battery one? Is the extra quality worth it? This is an individual decision, and I think programmes like this can make people feel guilty, but at the same time they can bring to people's attention something of which they were previously unaware. Maybe it could be said that it's unfair to those who can't afford the choice to make them feel guilty about buying the less-ethical product, but to be honest I think it's good for people to have some understanding of how the food they're eating is produced.

Another thing that strikes me is the belief that so many hold (myself included) that more ethically produced foods are more expensive than their mass-produced counterparts. Certainly the free-range and organic products in supermarkets seem to be priced much higher than the equivalent mass-produced items, but how much of this is supermarkets exploiting the fact that a lot of people will pay extra for what they perceive to be higher quality/higher status products? But this isn't necessarily true of smaller shops - I noticed someone buying a load of nuts and dried fruit in my mum's shop yesterday and I'm pretty certain he would have paid more for them in a supermarket. It's true none of the things in her shop are sold as cheaply as supermarket basic ranges but they certainly compare well with the 'normal' ranges.

I also wonder how much of the extra cost of buying a free-range chicken is down to the extra cost of production. I'm being pretty cynical here, but I think it's in the supermarkets' interest at the moment to keep the prices of free-range higher than non-free-range, at least while most people are either not bothered, are unaware or think that it's prohibitively expensive. At the moment I think free-range is seen by many as a premium range, and I actually think there are plenty of people who would be less likely to buy it if it was cheaper than the battery/mass-produced equivalent.

I said earlier that I thought that people have a choice, actually I think it's the big supermarket chains that have the choice. They can choose to possibly narrow their profit margins a little and sell free-range meat cheaper - gradually I'm assuming this would have the effect of reducing production costs slightly as demand goes up. I think this applies to all our food actually - we've got used to being able to buy cheap food and paying extra for 'higher' quality, when perhaps that higher quality is what we should be expecting in the first place. Many of us are pretty unaware of how what we eat ends up on our table and how the way it's produced affects others. Maybe most people don't care? Perhaps it's time we did.

Apologies for the long, long post to anyone who actually read it - it's late, I'm tired, and I didn't realise I felt so strongly!