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.

Because it can mask poor hygiene practices elsewhere in the food chain bats which is one of the reasons the EU doesn’t allow it to be imported.

I started out buying higher welfare meat, gradually cut it out and we now don't eat meat at home. I do buy fish, but only responsibly sourced, and only maybe once a week, eggs are alway organic.

Sorry x post.

I usually buy organic eggs, milk products and meat with labels that the animal welfare in Denmark has recommended. I only buy others if none of these are present.

I'm not as good when it comes to bread, chocolate, candy, vegetables etc.

Thanks llkjj and heartofthehouse

Welfare and British/local where possible esp after Brexit. Also willing to try long and slow cooking of less popular/cheaper cuts. Am currently eating less meat and more veggie meals for both health and economy. I still remember the years of BSE and CJD enough to try and ensure the food I eat is as untampered with as possible.

Indie: "The EU has set a maximum residue level of 0.01mg of chlorate per kg of food. It is not clear how much chlorate is present, on average, in chicken that has been washed with chlorine."

E+W: "The levels in tap water in England and Wales ...most water companies aim to keep the level below 1 mg/l." 2 litres tap water/day suggests up to 2 mg/day ingestion.

You know how MNers say not to wash a raw chicken, that washing chickens spreads germs? Wouldn't you prefer to wash a carcass (like washing prebagged lettuce) if you thought there could be chlorine residue affecting the taste? I know I would.

Also affects free trade... back to Brexit hassle. If UK lets in US chlorinated chickens, the EU will still want to keep them out.

Welfare 1000 times over. Would rather go without meat. This coming from a complete carnivore

Allowing chlorinated chicken essentially means accepting that the conditions those chickens are kept in requires us to bleach the chicken after it is slaughtered to make it safe to eat.

I don't know about anyone else but I would prefer chickens to live in good hygienic conditions in the first place rather fix the problem afterwards with chemicals.

For me personally it's a welfare issue not a chemical issue but lots of people are understandably concerned about the amount of chemicals being added to our food and water.

Quality; I choose what tastes nicest and that not always the ‘organic, free range’ choice. I remember buying a very expensive free range, organic turkey one Christmas and quite honestly it was not as good as the standard, frozen turkey I have bought every year since. Maybe I was unlucky.

I do look for the more unusual cut of meet like shin and skirt which are really good. We used to live near someone with a small holding and I enjoyed buying my meat direct from them but no longer have that option.

I would have said cheap food but when I just stopped to examine my own habits and what I buy for my family it hit me that I actually am very picky about the meat that I buy which I suppose I didn't really realise that I was doing. So yes, I'd have to say welfare would be my priority.

Welfare is more important to me than cost. I include in that food miles.

I'm not bothered about organic, I don't restrict myself to free range (except for eggs), but I do my best only to eat British meat (except on the odd occasion I buy chorizo or other European processed meat), and not that much of it (for health and environmental reasons, largely, but it's a big help with the food budget). I do look particularly carefully at welfare information when it comes to buying pork/ham/bacon. I want assurance that the pigs had a chance to get outside and weren't overcrowded.

I would rather never eat meat again than have US produced meat, or bog standard British meat if our welfare standards go down the drain on leaving the EU. I'm concerned for the animals' welfare and also my family's. On Twitter yesterday I saw somebody reporting the salmonella stats for the US and they were absolutely horrific compared with ours.

Fortunately, I love vegetables, pulses, grains, seeds, eggs and fish, so giving up or eating less meat would not be a big deal for me. It would be a huge deal for the UK landscape and economy to lose our farms, though.

Welfare and local. If that is too expensive or not available, then I don't buy any. We eat far less meat than we used to.
I categorically refuse to buy meat which is labelled that antibiotics have been used.

The problem I have with American farming practices is less about specific animal welfare concerns and more about the fact that their antibiotic and growth hormone use is incredibly high when you compare it with the standards in the UK and the EU. Although absolutely do not get me wrong, provenance and animal welfare is a priority for me when I am buying meat, but for the purposes of this thread my concerns with American food standards in general are far more to do with direct impacts on human health. Growth hormones are banned in the EU, antibiotic use is massively restricted in the EU and I’d hate to see the impact that introducing those substances in large quantities would have on public health. We already have an antibiotic resistance problem and the problems associated with growth hormones in food in the US are well documented so why we would ever want to import a product which only ever adds to those problems and spreads them around the globe I will never know. That’s before you consider the reasoning behind things like washing poultry in chlorine and it’s all just a bit grim.

I seriously hope that for the sake of public health and for our farmers over here that we don’t give a single inch on welfare standards for imported animal products. People need to remember that good quality, high welfare meat is not a staple that is needed every single day, it should be treated as luxury and eaten accordingly.

I agree I don't want the growth hormones & rampant antibiotics.

As for disinfectant sprays... the more I read about it the more I find it potentially very acceptable. All the US scientific articles talk about how the sprays reduce disease risk (germ count) & extend shelf life. There's a lot to like, if the residue levels could be found to pose negligible risk. How consistently chlorination reduces the germ load is not clear though, so the benefits need to be better proven. Maybe that's another valid objection, there aren't enough proven benefits & yet still uncertain risks (to human health). European model to tell consumers to assume that raw meat is always risky might be more sensible.

Having grown up In America (I left at 18 and moved to Italy where I learned to eat well!), welfare and good standards apply, ALL DAY long.

I was raised on shit American meat and potatoes and my family has been riddled with the most obscure cancers. No gene! Been tested. It’s our food.

I will pay more to avoid eating chlorinated chicken with a side of glyphosate. Thanks.

It is not a question of food safety. American lobbyists cannot get their heads around that.

And it is not just a matter of animal welfare. There is also the crucial question of environmental protection.

Battery cows in concrete sheds pumped full of more hormones than an East German shot-putter are a bad thing in themselves, but there is also the matter of the vast hectarage of soya needed to feed them, requring as it does the chopping down of vast areas of rain forest and/or the silent spring monoculture that's currently imperiled by the collapse of pollenating insect populations.

You don't need to be a wacko vegan to see the need for sustainable farming on marginal land. Most land is good only for pasture, which is why we keep sheep and cows. Human food production creates vast quantites of waste, which is why we keep pigs and chickens.

I'd rather not eat meat than eat low welfare meat. I certainly wouldn't want to eat meat imported from the USA.

It's easy to avoid crappy meat when shipping in the supermarket, but the D.C. will still be exposed to it in fast food restaurants.

I'd be very concerned about imported meat in school dinners. I didn't let my eldest have school dinners when he was little because of the crappy meat.

I do care about welfare, but don’t have the budget to shop the way I want to right now so we are vegetarian at the moment. I do buy eggs, but pay extra for free range and get from local farmers market whenever I can

Welfare standards.
I'm on a very tight budget tbh but I'd rather live off baked beans and dried pasta than have animals living and dying in appalling conditions just for a bit of extra pleasure for me.

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I wouldnt buy chlorinated chicken or chicken treated with growth hormones and would hope that would be clearly labelled so it could be avoided. I would avoid very cheap meat and always pick Scottish labelled meat/poultry first, followed by British hoping that equated to reasonable welfare standards.

I can't afford organic, but try to buy more butchers meat (quality over quantity) and less supermarket meat as it always looks less appealing.

Food price is the most important deciding factor for me. But that's why we've reduced meat consumption a lot, the cheapest things are often so tasteless.

We only buy organic direct from a UK farm where we know the welfare standards are good. DP occasionally buys something from the supermarket but not often as he knows I'll tell him off. I'm vegetarian anyway but only by organic, free range eggs, organic milk etc. I'd rather be vegan than buy budget dairy. Fortunately we're pretty well off so the price of animal products isn't an issue.

I'd rather eat less meat and know that it is safe and as humanely produced as possible.