to feel sorry that chickens' happiness isn't worth 60p to most people?

[oohdaddypig]

So - in my local Sainsburies you can buy pre-cooked whole chickens. Free range cost 60p more than the battery farmed variety.

Girl behind the counter told me almost no one buys the free range ones.

Now, I know things are very very tight these days for many families. But this is Sainburies where the average shopper is probably slightly better off.

Doesn't anyone care about where their food comes from now at all? Is the only thing that matters now the cost?

I'm not vegetarian - but I try to shop reasonably thoughtfully, locally when I can etc,

poor chooks!

Amberleaf.
Yes

Cheaper meat is a con. It's shrinks when the water goes. It also doesn't taste as good. When a chicken gets bruised or burn it damage the meat and tastes rubbish.
We have chicken maybe once a month but I do my own so it really makes you appreciate them.
Just google broiler chicken ugh. birds are culled at around sixteen weeks any longer and they keel over. People will tell you it's the breed type as they are designed to grow fast to get to weight quickly yet I have a happy healthy Hubbard (which is one of the needs they use) that is over three years old.

@Noqontrol I'm a vegan. Ive been a vegan for 29 years. I'm not the one eating dead animals.

I've no idea of the price difference, having had horrible stringy expensive free range chicken in the past, I don't look.

It's the people who eat meat who don't give a shit. Whether or not the meat is 'free range'. Free range meat is just a big con to stop people moving away from meat altogether.

Whenever my Dad goes food shopping he always mentions Chickens, the prices of battery eggs, the conditions they live in. He would most certainly buy the free range chicken!

I do own a pets

And guess what? They occasionally eat chicken too. But that is a rare luxury

I thought free range was a bit lame anyway in relation to what they actually have to do to e deemed free range? Like a tiny bit more room but no where near the free in the fields image it likes to pretend

Noqontrol I'm surprised at a vegetarian arguing the case for 'better' meat tbh!

Bronze my 'cheap' meat tastes very nice (as does all my cooking).

Disagree Matablis. I don't think theres any harm in eating meat, nor is there a need to be vegan or veggie. But i don't agree with factory farming. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There are better ways.
Although ideally if you have the stomach to kill your own meat then that would be the ideal, if you still want it. I know thats not practical though in this country. I used to eat fish and went out fishing with a fisherman friend with the intention of fishing for and killing my own fish. When i found i couldn't then i stopped eating it. My friend who lives in NZ was vegan for years, until she started killing and eating her own meat from the wild. I totally admire her for being able to do that.

Just because you buy cheap meat doesn't mean you will go round kicking animals FFS

The implications on this thread are laughable

I probably worded the 'nor is there a need' wrongly. Sorry. Down to individual preference obviously.

I'd happily pay the extra 60p for a free range cooked chook, but I have never seen then in our Sainsburys and the price difference between a raw standard chook & free range one is a lot more than 60p.

@noqontrol well then you're not actually a vegetarian are you. You disagree with fundamental tenets of vegetarianism. You are someone who doesn't eat meat currently (if indeed that is really the case which I doubt from what you've said).

You might as well do that kayano.

YANBU. When it comes to food, there is definitely a "what I don't think about, isn't really happening" attitude.

I have found that Sainsburys is the only supermarket that sell affordable organic chickens! They are almost double the price in ASDA!!!!!

(thats raw, not precooked)

Haven't eaten meat since i was 18. Am 43 now. Small blip of eating fish but I'm over that now. Am i not veggie then? You surprise me. Because i thought a veggie was someone who didn't eat meat.

That was to metabilis.

Am going to be controversial however I believe that food is very cheap these days. Not so long ago a roast chicken on a Sunday was a special treat.

That (special treat) roast chicken was probably a chicken from a farm where it had grown and lived and been fed and watered and cared for.

Nowadays we have so much money (relatively speaking) and we still look for "cheap meat" like it's some kind of bargain.

It isn't a bargain. It's criminal. Have you read about the poor milk farmers. FFS how can animals ever have a good quality of life when supermarkets are paying farmers so little.

Actually I would go as far as to say it is you who is being rude and deliberately misunderstanding

Red roof said she hoped the people who didn't but free range did not own pets. I find that insulting as if because you buy cheap meat you would be inclined to treat any pets cruelly.

So no I was not being rude, you were.

Good use of the stock Mumsnet rude response though. Good effort

That argument is strange kayano. You treat your own animal well but dont care about the conditions of the animal down the road and the conditions its kept in. It makes no sense. Unless its a case of just caring about your own and nothing else in the wider scheme of things.