Local butchers importing meat from China

Visit an industrial farm or abattoir here and tell me how nicely the animals are treated

Me too. Apart from anything it means it not fresh. Then don't get me started on the ethics from all directions.

I will be checking all of mine moving forward OP, thank you.

Yes, my small Xmas dinner Duchy chicken was £20 from waitrose.

Of course they don't get it direct themselves from China. They use wholesalers. There are plenty of fruit/veg, meat and fish wholesalers, it's not just cash n carries.

I think the USP of meat from a butcher is that it's better quality than supermarket meat (and possibly higher welfare) and that implies British meat or at least western European meat, but definitely not Chinese meat! OP has been misled, deliberately or otherwise. I think she's entitled to be fuming.

Would you be willing to pay what it really costs to raise, slaughter, package and distribute the chicken here?

Most people wouldn't be prepared to pay £15 for a chicken. But that’s actually the cost to do it here and make a profit for the farmer.

I went into our local farm shop the other weekend and asked for something local - surprise me I said. I got home and he had wrapped up a nice piece of solar panel, about 12 inches long and six inches wide, tied up with string.

Just out of interest, how much was it OP? A chicken in our local farm shop costs about £20. That’s not even organic, but it is high welfare and local. Decent meat costs money (and should).

What did you pay for it?
id be horrified
but if i hadn’t paid £15+ for that chicken I’d know it wasn’t from a good source.

I read an article about that and it has changed my honey buying habits.
The article also said much of the honey imported isn't 100% honey 😮
You really need to read the label.
I'm buying local honey now, it is a lot more expensive but worth it.

That's very shocking. I'm fortunate that we have a fantastic butcher in our town - all meat sourced locally or within the West Country - and all the farms they source from are listed on their website.
They're incredibly friendly, & very knowledgeable. More expensive than the supermarkets but very popular. Regularly have queues out the door at weekends & Christmas.
Find a better butcher!

It's also worth remembering the terrible battery farms are local to someone! Local meat doesn't always mean better standards.

Some butchers/farm shops really capitalise on the automatic assumption its local that's not checked Thus have allsorts of far flung meats

I agree with previous poster that in someways it's clearer in supermarkets because they label better

There's a big trendy farm shop near me, that sells half local but a surprising amount isn't. They will have for example all the produce laid out on tables, in big crates etc so it looks really rustic but it's mostly the same as what you'd buy in Tesco, and their meat is probably similar. The farms near them supply to the big supermarkets as well as them.
They have vague signs about say pork from within 10 miles but neglect to mention that they only buy in a tiny portion of that and the rest is just generic so maybe only one variation of the selection of sausages or their "made with British pork" sausage roll is only a small portion of British pork

Another does similar but at least it's clearly labelled and they try to follow seasonal food. Obviously if your wanting an array of bright veg in the winter, it won't be local but they try to follow the seasons in the main with a small amount of imported staples.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I ball but given up on eating meat because most of it is cheap, imported crap pumped full of water.
When i do buy meat i buy expensive meat that i know the origin of.

Very true.
And yet it doesn't bother me.

It is often the same with honey, 90% of what we eat in the UK is imported and 80% of the imports come from China.

Dont like it dont buy it simple.
No need to be fuming about it.

There was an article on the news the other day about farmers from Yorkshire selling pigs trotters to China - exporting the bits we don't want to people that do makes sense, so I think some international trade in meat is not a bad thing. That said, I want my meat home grown, high welfare and organic so I buy direct from UK farmers that can supply that. However it means that we only eat meat once a week as its expensive, so there's that.

When I used various local butchers (before they all closed), none of their meat was packaged.

I would expect anything wrapped to not be local - nor indeed British.

Good advice @MushMonster
I live in Ireland where the Irish tricolour is put on packaging for chicken and other meats and the words Produced in Ireland put beside the Irish "flag".
Unfortunately produced in Ireland relates to the processing and does not mean the chicken, beef or ham came from animals reared in Ireland under EU laws.
It is a marketing thing and I believe it should be banned as it is very misleading.
If it says Bord Bia approved on the packaging then I know it's meat from Irish bred animals.

There's a huge international meat market and there has been for decades. Chickens are broken down and things like the head, feet, heart, neck etc command a better price abroad. Consumers in the UK will pay more for thigh, breast, drumstick, "whole" birds etc.

Without this trade, huge amounts of usable chicken would go to waste.

@Lambington I'm not convinced that products like Danish bacon are superior in terms of animal welfare.

I’m a proud remoaner, but it’s been going on way, way longer than Brexit!

Same here, U.K. reared only.

As regards the OP, presumably it’s cheaper, and he thinks that most customers won’t care about the origin or animal welfare, as long as they can eat relatively cheap meat.

This is what Brexiteers voted for. Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch were crowing about the trade deals they signed. This is the result!

Grim. Where I used to work they marketed their beef as British. Half the time it was Brazilian and the rest of the time it varied wildly.