Free Range Chicken

Olliebeak

davetaylor wrote: »

.............If the Supermarkets are paying farmers 3 pence per chicken, and then selling them for say £2.50. Does that mean they are making £2.47 profit? Dave

not really £2.47 profit. There will be their overheads to be taken into account - as they are all very fond of telling us - processing/freezing, transport, handling, usual store overhead costs - but exactly how they calculate their amounts for 'overheads' is anybody's guess!

But even so - they do have a damn big profit margin and no doubt would want to have a similar % profit margin on the price of Free Range bird. Don't forget that 'profit based on % of original price' works out higher than 'profit per item' as you go further upscale.

sarahlsmith22

Has anyone actually been able to find a free range chicken to purchase in the last week? My usual online shop brought everything but the chicken, so I popped to tesco, no free range, went to sainsbury, no free range, went back to Tesco and the assistant said "yeah since that show on TV every time we put one on the shelf it almost gets ripped out of our hands". I want chicken tonight!

Kimberley

In waitrose they are £15 :eek:

DonnaP

Hi

I have been buying non - free range from my local farm shop for ages. They have assured me that while not free range, they are not intensively reared and do go out of the barn at set points during the day. The price is about £1 - £1.50 more than standard supermarket chickens.

I would like to buy free range but I don't go to a main supermarket on a regular basis. When I called in to Asda last week for something, there were no free range chickens at all!!

Donna

thriftlady_2

Can I just remind everyone that supermarkets are not the only shops;) A decent butcher will be able to source a free-range chook for you if you ask. Try a Q Guild butcher.

My butcher sells only free range or barn reared chickens. He sells them frozen for £1.71 a lb if you buy 4 at a time. That works out at about £8.50 a chicken.

~Chameleon~

DonnaP wrote: »

Hi

I have been buying non - free range from my local farm shop for ages. They have assured me that while not free range, they are not intensively reared and do go out of the barn at set points during the day. The price is about £1 - £1.50 more than standard supermarket chickens.

I would like to buy free range but I don't go to a main supermarket on a regular basis. When I called in to Asda last week for something, there were no free range chickens at all!!

Donna

The chickens you're buying from your farm shop are probably far better quality than even the supermarket free range ones. No, I don't trust supermarkets one little bit, even if they do claim their meat is free range

otterspasm

I can't remember whether I heard this on the radio or on another tv documentary but the definition of 'free-range' can even be stretched to limits that I find appalling. I seem to remember that they can have as little as an hour outside per day and spend the rest of the day cooped up inside. How could a bird kept like that be happy and healthy (in the most rounded sense of the word)?

I am on a very tight budget and always buy organic and free range meat and eggs. We just make sure that we get 3 meals (for 2 adults and 2 pre-schoolers) and a pot of stock out of each bird. We buy less meat than we used to and make it go much further. Eating lots of cheap and healthy lentils and other such stuff on days when we are not having meat.

At a butchers near us, I can get a wild rabbit for £2.80. It has run totally free and eaten what and when it likes. I assume its been happy and was killed just down the road from us. I can get 2 meals for 4 and a pot of lovely stock from it. Can't beat that!

I think we must just vote with our feet. Money, or rather loss of it, is the only thing that will make supermarkets change.

competitionscafe

kj*daisy wrote: »

Sainsburys had a load of freedom food chicken in today - so assume that's free range.
Organic chicken is free range as well.

The word freedom is quite misleading in this context - Freedom food (RSPCA scheme) is not free-range - they are indoor reared but at a slightly lower stocking density than the intensive birds and with perches and other 'stimulation' (things to peck at, footballs (!) etc). The freedom refers to freedom from (hunger, thirst etc - see below) but I agree it sounds too similar to free-range or freedom to roam.

I am a bit sceptical about the Freedom food birds though ever since watching a Dispatches documentary (things may have improved since then).

There was a dispatches programme last year as well as BBC Watchdog which revealed that the RSPCA only had 10 full time officials to police the scheme in the whole of the UK.

"A former RSPCA council member claims on the programme that the inspection back-up provided by the RSPCA for the Freedom Food scheme is flawed because it employs too few people.

One in 20 farm animals in Britain is reared under the Freedom Food scheme, but there are only 10 full-time officials to police it which means that farms can go up to 15 months without an inspection. "

In an interview on the programme, Celia Hammond, a former RSPCA council member, says the organisation does not employ enough people to inspect farms properly and urges the RSPCA to withdraw from the scheme: "They can't adequately monitor the number of animals."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,2032547,00.html

The RSPCA's director general, also said that the freedoms were only aspirations :
"five freedoms were "aspirations" rather than guarantees"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,2032547,00.html

These are only very basic aspirations too - the freedom refers to "freedoms from" hunger, etc and I agree the word freedom is close enough to free-range to be misleading.

While the JO programme did a good job of showing the difference between an ordinary intensive unit and one which met the RSPCA standards/aspirations as well as the compelling argument that one of the Freedom scheme birds would only cost the consumer an extra quid, I think this was overly simplistic and if you believe the Dispathces programme there is no assurance that all freedom scheme birds will be the "happy" perching, hanging corn pecking, spaciously housed birds shown in the second clip.

"The RSPCA standards for the rearing, handling, transport and slaughter of farm animals are broadly based on the Five Freedoms as defined by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC). Although these are ideal states, they provide a benchmark towards which the detailed RSPCA standards aim:

Freedom from hunger and thirst
# by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.

Freedom from discomfort
# by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

Freedom from pain, injury or disease
# by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.

Freedom to express normal behaviour
# by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind.

Freedom from fear and distress
# by ensuring conditions and care which avoid mental suffering."

Source: http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RSPCA/RSPCARedirect&pg=welfarestandards

Although admittadly for chickens the standards do go into more specific detail:
http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RSPCA/RSPCARedirect&pg=welfarestandards&marker=1&articleId=1121442811407

competitionscafe

davetaylor wrote: »

If the Supermarkets are paying farmers 3 pence per chicken, and then selling them for say £2.50. Does that mean they are making £2.47 profit?

Dave

The figure I read was that farmers got an average of 3p profit per bird - they were paid an average of £1.16 for an average intensively reared bird but it cost them £1.13 per bird to raise them. The farmers profit per free-range bird was an average of 24p.

competitionscafe

thriftlady wrote: »

Can I just remind everyone that supermarkets are not the only shops;) A decent butcher will be able to source a free-range chook for you if you ask. Try a Q Guild butcher.

Agreed! And as supermarkets aim to maximise profits for their shareholders they may go for the lowest standards they can get away with (as mentioned, both free-range and organic standards vary greatly, the highest standard for organic standard is suppossed to be the Soil Association, so look out for their logo, free-range can vary from little better than barn-raised to better than organic - all very confusing I agree!)

I realise that those who work 9-5 may have little option but to use a supermarket unless they do all their meat shopping on a Saturday or have a butcher with longer weekday opening hours.