What is more important to you - cheap food or high welfare standards?

[Scrowy]

There has been news coverage today that the US has said that to enable trade relations the UK may have to consider lowering some food standards (chlorinated chicken, growth hormones etc).

As a beef and sheep farmer I'm genuinely interested to know if the British public really cares about animal welfare standards or if the reality is that money is tight and as long as it's meat people aren't actually too choosy about it's origins if the price is right?

Please don't pander to me, please be honest. If the truth is that you would like to think you would choose high welfare but when it comes down to it at the supermarket shelf you choose the cheaper option... just say.

I’m vegetarian but find this interesting when applied to eggs. I was sure they’d stopped battery farming for eggs years ago and thought the final battle was stopping those eggs being used in prepared foods like cakes. I’ve started noticing more and more shops selling battery farmed eggs and people buying them. I can’t understand it at all. When I had a very very tight food budget I always bought free range and just ate fewer eggs!

I'm on minimum wage but there's no way I'm feeding myself ory family chlorine washed chicken

I do buy cheap because although I would prefer to buy higher welfare it's just too big of a jump and I know the cheap stuff is safe to eat. I do buy free range eggs though. If the US trade deal goes down I would not buy cheap meat in the UK. That's what would force me to do something about it. It should be welfare but it's not, and I know that's crap really.

Welfare.
We only buy outdoor bred/free range etc.
But we aren’t on a tight budget.

Given a choice I choose welfare. We eat little meat to be honest, but I always choose the better quality/free range option if it's there. Good quality meat is expensive which is why, coupled with the environmental impact of it, we don't eat much (3 dinners will be meat/fish, the rest of our meals are veggie save the occasional lunch of leftovers).
I agree OP about the lack of choice. There is very little free range pork in supermarkets for example, and what they have are very limited cuts. If you want something lazy like pre-marinated chicken then you have no option but to buy the lower welfare meat. I am guilty of buying this stuff occassionally, but would choose free range if it was stocked.
In addition to meat, I buy organic yoghurts, butter, and cream, and Clarence Court eggs (which I believe have the best welfare of all the supermarket brands?). We don't drink milk.

Speaking to friends and work colleagues on this subject over the years I would say I am in a minority however. Most people (in my anecdotal study) would rather lower the quality/welfare before cutting their meat consumption. Meat is seen as essential to a meal. There's been a huge change since my childhood, when there was the belief that meat was a luxury and if you couldn't afford it you didn't eat it. We mostly had cheap cuts plus periods of imposed vegetarianism.

@Scrowy I buy all my meat at the local butcher. I know the provenance of everything but it's £££.

My family are farmers in NI, they always keep one cattle back for them unvaccinated and no antibiotics to eat through the year. They drink raw milk.

What are your thoughts on antibiotics etc in the general food chain?

It's interesting really because I do see people scoffing at the idea of organic etc online and I think they have a point in the UK but I actually came to realise that it is a big deal in the US because standards are so different between organic and standard farming. I do trust the UK regulations at the moment but I don't know if we will be able to post brexit.

It's similar to the issue of buying cheap items online from China. I never used to be wary of buying from amazon but since these millions of very cheap products have started to spring up from dubious sellers I am very wary, DS1 would even say paranoid about it! I just am very aware that there are regulations put in place by the eu most of which we are not especially aware of, we just assume something made for a child for example will be safe, the paints won't be toxic, small pieces aren't likely to break off and be swallowed. By buying from outside these controls you bypass them and I'm very careful about what i do buy from these sources.

If I'm paying full price, then I'll pay more for ethical stuff and organic stuff, not because it's better for me personally (I don't think it is, particularly) but because it's better for the environment and for our continued long-term survival. I also will only buy free-range organic eggs, etc, because I've heard that the non-organic ones, the hens are still debeaked, and that's pretty horrific.

But if it's in the reduced-price section, then anything goes, and I eat a lot of reduced-price stuff of all sorts - bread, veg, everything, not just meat. (I figure it's better that someone eat it, than it get dumped - but I am prepared to listen to arguments about this helping to create a market for it.)

I've stopped eating things like crab and octopus (not that I ever ate a lot of either!) because I have learned that they are very clever, and I don't think we know enough about them to know what a happy life and good welfare looks to an octopus, whereas we do with pigs, etc. So I think it's easier to know what's good welfare for a pig than a crab, although both are intelligent.

...but I'm generally eating a lot less meat anyway.

In theory all uk meat is traceable and withdrawal periods for antibiotics before the animal gets into the foodchain are strictly adhered to.

But that relies on everyone in the chain telling the truth, and as far as I know no routine testing is done after slaughter to check antibiotic levels.

So for example we might sell some of our 'fat' (aka food chain bound) lambs through an auction adhering to all the food chain requirements (I.e no antibiotics).

A week later we may sell some breeding lambs (female lambs intended to be used for breeding on other farms) through the same auction, only these lambs may have recieved vaccinations etc that the food chain bound lambs didn't. We have no control over who buys them and what they do with them after they leave us. So lambs we intended to go for onward breeding may (rarely) end up in the foodchain instead.

I only buy ‘red tractor’ meat. I can’t afford organic, or the absolute best welfare meat, but I do what I can, and have cut down on my meat consumption rather than buy the really cheap stuff. So I’m not a saint, but I’m not keen on going vegetarian.

I would become vegetarian rather than eat chlorinated chicken or hormone fed beef. I can't afford to eat totally organic meat, but I won't buy Danish pork or bacon and always buy free range eggs. I avoid the cheapest meat and my daughter is vegetarian so I may well join her. My husband is a definite meat eater though as is my son, but he can afford high welfare meat (he has his own home)

On my low income price is the factor for me. If I had concerns about chlorine, hormones or antibiotics in cheap meat then the alternative would be to stop eating it rather than pay more for better quality.

I am diabetic and trying eat fewer carbs, so not sure how my blood sugar would like a diet with very little or no meat/fish.

Welfare and British/Irish because I care about food miles also. The effect of US meat coming in will be for us to buy less meat overall and to be particularly choosy where it comes from.

Scrowy thank you, I’m really grateful for your reply. I completely agree, selling milk as a “premium brand” is ridiculous. But I can’t bear the thought of dairy farmers being shafted, so as long as I’m able to, I’ll pay more for milk.

(As ridiculous as it sounds, having BF 2 babies (the first of which I solely expressed for for 9 months) I no longer waste even a drop of milk as I realise now that it takes a lot to produce it )

High welfare standards. Minimal UK standards are not great, despite being so much better than many, so would go back to when I couldn't afford meat and not eat it often, if bog standard standards became us standards.

Non meat protein is difficult for me, mind. I used to rely on cheese, though, even with out us style "welfare" standards, I'm struggling with it through perimenopause as a migraine trigger. I use soya milk for breakfast because of the protein content compared with other milk substitutes, which leave me with mid morning shakes. I don't tolerate a lot of soya based meat substitutes, though. Palpitations and stomach cramps.

The boys are both autistic and eat a limited beige diet. They need the real deal. I can work something out for myself but they worry me more.

A couple of things (quoting @Scrowy not to be picky, thought it would be easier as these are points I wanted to pick up on from my personal perspective!).

Those of you that choose meat based on price would you be tempted by cheaper cuts (ox cheek, beef shin, lamb scrag end, offal etc) if they were routinely more available?

Absolutely. But I can’t get hold of them I can buy some hearts and livers for example in the supermarket, but it can be hard to get decent shin, neck, cheek, tail etc. My aforementioned not-good-butchers doesn’t do them, there are some dodgy looking butchers shops selling some of these cuts but it’s imported meat (I want welfare and British so that doesn’t help!), the really expensive butchers does more variety of cuts but when I say expensive, I’m referring to one of the most well known/pricey butchers in London!

this isn't reflected at the checkout and it's actually quite hard to find properly high welfare meat at the big supermarkets. To me this suggests that actually for most people price point is more more important than origin/welfare.

I come back to choice and availability, and some convenience. I am still looking for ways to buy higher welfare, British meat, happily accepting any random cuts that are less popular, but I don’t seem to find that option. I live in London, I would have hoped we’d have something but perhaps being in the capital makes that particular effort harder. You can buy expensive meat boxes (which I often find don’t have the meat I want, eg it’s all chicken breast, sausage and steak, when we normally buy things like whole chicken, pork or lamb shoulder, beef brisket etc) or go to the super pricey butchers, as above, but that is I think way beyond paying more for welfare (I do believe it must be possible, for example, to get beef with fairly decent welfare, British, happy with a random cut/lesser used piece, for less than £50-60/kg). However my options seem to be super expensive, or supermarket.

I’ll keep looking but it’s been years of hunting and trialling (I even trialled the super expensive place to see if I could make it work in small amounts, but it didn’t work out!), it’s hard to find decent options and as I mentioned upthread, there isn’t a great deal of transparency in the supermarket anyway on welfare. I buy British, try to get things labelled free range or similar, but there isn’t always an option (eg pork shoulder in Tesco is just that’s, is British, but there’s not really anything about welfare, red tractor etc and there’s just the one option).

If anyone has any good recommendations for sourcing higher welfare British meat (eg online?), please do let me know!

M&S sell a lot of outdoor reared pork shoulder. Not perfect but a good step up from just red tractor (which is a good step up from imported) and it's still cheap. About £2.50-£3 for 500-600g.

Their bog standard chicken thighs are similarly priced for roughly rspca assured standards.

Higher welfare standards. For the sake of both the animals and the quality of meat.

Welfare and ethical to British farmers where possible.

So whole chickens and chicken breasts I buy free range. Can't afford organic and am not convinced organic adds much except ££££.

Beef I look for the red tractor. I think beef cattle have it pretty easy. 2 years alternating between huge barns and fields. Lamb is the same, over shorter times but not 'factory' farmed.

Pork I don't often buy, apart from sausages occasionally. I need to see what aldi offers, if they do free range etc.

As well as welfare other things are important. Is it locally sourced? Are the farmers treated fairly? Is there a load of unnecessary packaging etc.

I'm really fussy about meat and we use riverford for meat, it means we can't eat meat all the times as we are not on a high budget but I would never want to buy the cheaper stuff for many reasons including welfare and the stuff that goes into it. We used to have a amazing local butchers but he had to close his stuff was very high quality but more expensive than the supermarket and he went out of business so I guess for a lot of people it would be price related. I would love to buy all organic/ local produce but can't afford to.

We don't eat a lot of meat - well over half our meals are fish or veggie, and I will only buy British, FR eggs and chicken - I can afford to make that choice - and will only ever buy British high-welfare pork and bacon. I will never buy Danish or any other European pork or bacon because of the factory farming issue. But we don't eat a lot of either.
I only buy British butter, too.

Welfare if gets too pricey then we will just eat less meat

I prefer high welfare, but will buy cheap meat - so long as I know it is British as I trust the minimum standards. I do go for some from elsewhere in the EU - Irish beef, spanish pork products, but again I know their are certain minimum standards.