Supermarket Secrets revealed?

beadysam

I've just hatched 18 chicks :T so I will be eating my own chickens in a few months - safe in the knowledge they have had a good life and been well cared for. I will also know I am not slowly killing myself by eating supermarket abominations :eek: .
SAM xx

N9eav

Most chickens produced for eating are reared the same way. The only way to make a proffit and keep prices low is to rear a chicken as fast as possible. Usually commercial farmers can get a chicken from hatch to table in 8 weeks or so. This is done by feeding them 24 hours a day in large barns. The chickens just eat and do little else.
Most butchers buy their stock from the same place as supermarkets, but at a higher cost. Organic chickens may just have been raised the same way as the others but fed organic food.
The only true happy chicken, before it was slaughtered was the free range bird.

Debt_Free_Chick

N9eav wrote:

Organic chickens may just have been raised the same way as the others but fed organic food.

Absolutely not true. The Soil Association Organic standard applies to the health of the animal and the farmer's husbandry - not just the food that the animal is fed.

Organic is the highest standard you can buy. Next is free range - there is no formal standard for this but it should ensure that the animal has been reared naturally. It could even be the same standard as "organic" but farmers are not allowed to actually label their produce as Organic, unless they've been through the formal Soil Association accreditation scheme (expensive & time consuming).

More on the Soil Association website here.

One of the reasons Organic can be more expensive is that the farmer has to try and recoup the costs of meeting the Soil Association's standards.

If you want to be sure of the meat you're buying - Chicken or any other - talk to your butcher. They will tell you the breed of the animal, how it was raised, where, where it was slaughtered, when, how long it was hung for .....

Please - find a good butcher and use him. If there's not one on your doorstep, it's worth going to a good butcher a few miles away and filling your freezer, every now & then. Most butchers will "do a deal" if you place a large order.

gritts

saraht wrote:

I agree newunk. I feel terrible that I've been buying supermarket chickens and supporting these wicked practises for so long.

Can anyone tell me if organic chickens from the supermarket definitely would have had reasonable lives and are safe for me to buy?

On the RSPCA website they would recommend the purchase of freedom food, free range or organic chicken.

http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RSPCACampaigns/Broilers/BroilersHomepage

And Debt free chick is exactly right on organic.

swizzle_2

Nearly £10 for a free range chicken, looks like e will be going veggie!!

No I mean it, had been looking into buying organic red meat, but looked like I`d have to buy online and with higher costs plus £8 p&p that priced me right out. Now after watching that programe I never want to eat a chicken again.

So I think it`s soya from now on, my children don`t like the taste/texture of meat anyhow, only the odd sausage-expensive ones.

So how do I start?

Better start a new thread.

summerday

Thanks to all those who replied to my question. I looked on RSPCA website and there is a petition being done to put forward to the big supermarkets to say that we consumers want and expects higher chicken rearing standards if anyone is interested in signing it.

I am going to have a good think about where is best to get my chicken from. I have a freind who has chickens in her garden who has them culled for meat and first I thought I could never do that how awful but now I definitely think that at least her chickens have a nice, longer life than all the barn chickens.

squeaky

swizzle wrote:

So I think it`s soya from now on, my children don`t like the taste/texture of meat anyhow, only the odd sausage-expensive ones.

So how do I start?

Better start a new thread.

Yes please Good idea.

tr3mor

there's a couple of butchers locally near me, both seem pretty nice, reasonably priced with decent meat, but how do i know how it's been reared? i'll feel like a bit of a pillock walking in on a busy saturday morning and asking the butcher loads of daft questions.

i suppose i could just tell by looking at the chicken. the difference in those two meats, even just the colour, was ridiculous.

Madmum_2

I've found that reputable butchers will only be too happy and even proud to talk to you about the origin of their meat. Its worth asking. It sticks in my throat a bit to see jamie oliver on tv promoting Sainsburys after all he says on his cooking programmes about finding out the origin of meat and only buying meat when you know the source!! He promotes the blue parrot range the healthy one which they showed the chicken nuggets last night having a higher fat content than their normal range of chicken nuggets.

aliasojo

I watched this program last night too and OH and I were disgusted at the state of the chicken and meat that's offered for sale.

I knew chickens weren't treated particularly well but I didn't realise how bad it could be for some of them. I was also very surprised to see the amount of fat that came out of one chicken. We eat a lot of chicken thinking it's healthy, what a joke.

There was a huge difference in colour between the supermarket chicken and fresh farm reared chicken, in my ignorance I would have thought the lighter meat was the better of the two! At least now I've been educated a little.

I want to try to find a decent butcher to buy from now, but how do you know where their meat comes from? Just because they are a small butcher shop doesn't necessarily mean they only deal with quality fresh meat (although it should mean that).

Wish there was a website that listed butchers in each area who only supply fresh, healthy unadulterated meat. Like tr3mor....I'm concerned about the 'pillock' angle.