£8.10 on a flipping chicken!

[mnahmnah]

Went to Lidl yesterday to spend as little as possible on a small shop to get us through the weekend. Needed a chicken for Sunday dinner and as a vegetarian I didn’t want to hang around looking at them all. I was sure I picked one from the shelf labelled as £3.75. DM has just informed me that it was a free range fancy chicken costing £8.10 on the label! Already in the oven. It had better be a bloody gorgeous chicken for the people eating it! I don’t even benefit!

What’s been your most costly shopping mistake? Make me feel less stupid please!

How can a vegan think it light hearted to post about their deliberately choosing meat raised under the poorest welfare conditions available? And whinge when it's pointed out she actually chose one raised in much better conditions?

As everyone else says, £8 for the whole life of an animal is nothing. Difficult to see past that and find this light-hearted.

We eat a mostly vegetarian diet and any meat or dairy that we buy is organic for welfare reasons primarily. Even so-called "free range" chickens are generally kept in dismal conditions. It's a bit of a con really.

The value of a chicken's life isn't really a very lighthearted subject to be fair

This

This is MN where posters eat smoked organic unicorn

In real life, people buy cheap chicken nuggets because thats what they can afford and their kids like it and they'll be no waste.

Cant do a lighthearted cheap chicken thread here.

I don't think ybu. I'd balk at 8 quid for a chicken too.

Yep agreed. Exactly how I feel. Don't understand cheap meat - It's like the animal's life had no value.

£18 for an entire animal doesn't make it fairer on the animal to be fair, even free range and organic and whatever else chickens have terrible conditions. I do feel sorry for the humans exploited in cheaper ones, but the suffering for the animal is similar whatever the price tag, people just line butchers pockets to make themselves feel better mostly.

I don't think £8 is particularly cheap. We normally pay around £6.50.

Op didn't say they were vegan but veggie. Also I suspect OPs annoyance is the inability to have any sort of lighthearted thread on MN.

It's complete nonsense to say that the suffering of the animal is similar regardless of the conditions its reared in. All you could hope to achieve by peddling that false narrative is that people who buy into it will think "what's the point in buying higher welfare meat" and you'll potentially push more people onto buying cheap, battery and cage farmed meat. Surely that's not your intention?

Do you actually know what happens on a battery farm vs an organic chicken farm, for example?

Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than someone who states “in real life” like their version of life is the only version and everyone else is in fantasy land. In real life people have different budgets and that will sometimes include buying a chicken from the butchers for £18. My own cchicken only cost £8.81 but is smaller than I’d like. Id rather pay more and let the farmer have more than 2p profit per bird than buy £3 meat. ( and also that the animal has a better life if possible )

To answer the question I once misread the price for an Easter egg and ended up paying £30 for it after queuing ages to pay.

I am beyond flabbergasted at the OP and her way of thinking as a vegetarian herself and it doesn't appear to me that she has any regard and concern for animal welfare.

Even most of the meat-eaters on this thread appear to have more sensitivity and respect towards animals than she has!

It's a chicken FFS

“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're onlyanimals.” —Theodor W. Adorno, German philosopher,

That's the way our sick society runs, the life of an animal is worthless and so we treat it as sht, and we ourselves pay a price because to think that it is a healthy meal is just rubbish. It's stuffed full of sht just like our rivers and oceans and soil and air.

Precisely. Thank you.

As a vegetarian, I totally agree with what everyone is saying about the value of a chicken’s life. But everyone else in my family are meat eaters. The point of this was to discuss a costly mistake rather than an animal rights debate.

@CremeEggThief

You don’t know me or my views to judge me. The thread was about a costly mistake. Not a debate on animal welfare.

It's only a chicken
They are mass produced specifically as food. They don't need to be expensive to soothe people's conscience.

Oh no @mnahmnah - hope it's a delicious chicken!

I've done the same at booths before - read the price per kg as the chicken price, thought it was £9 something (thought oh a good price for just over 2kg of chicken and it looked like fantastic quality).

It was not in-fact the total price, it was over £20 for the chicken 😂 tbh it was delicious, free range, corn fed etc etc and now I get them but not ones that giant as there's only two of us, just the crowns or smaller ones! But it was definitely a shock the first time I didn't do it by choice when I read the receipt at home 😂

Ditto. A £4 chicken is either tiny, poor quality or both.

Previous response was to @Pandaflop , who understands my point

I’ve never spent less than £10 on a chicken so I’m finding it hard to be outraged over this. I’d be more appalled if a family member spent under £5.

Oh sorry yes, free range chickens live a life of luxury before they're slaughtered:

Free-range poultry must meet legal requirements. The RSPCA states that chickens must have a defined amount of space (no more than 13 birds a square metre), be 56 days old before they are slaughtered and have continuous daytime access to open-air runs, with vegetation, for at least half their lifetime.

They're reared, males gassed to death and then slaughtered for you to eat however much you pay. The life span of a farmed chicken whether free range or caged is sadly so short that I can't get on board with free range being fine- it's marginally better but nothing to make your conscious clear.

And yes, I spent many years living with my grandparents on their farm as a child and worked in an arbitoir when between sixth form and university. I am not against anyone eating meat at all, but I find the it's fine I buy from the butchers amusing.

Organic chicken is £18

I usually spend about £9 to £13 as only buy M&S higher welfare or from the farm shop.

Yesterday I spent £27 on one. They were from Walter rose in Devizes which is a great butcher- one of the best- I had no idea when I asked for it- expected it to be the farm shop kind of £14 or so-- I was too embarrased to say 'are you shitting me' Let's just say I will be getting the mumsnet 4 meals from it!!!

Reminds me, I need to put the oven on and cook mine.