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!

I always thought that being able to eat meat was a privilege, not a right.

Meat is not essential to people, an adequate quantity of nutritious food is, but there is no reason that should have to include meat.

What? A privilege only the well off should have?

Oh well, as long as you get your meat then. Thats all that matters. Doesn't matter about the conditions that animals are kept in as long as you get their sorry carcasses on your table at the right price. How ridiculous to think that anything else might matter.

Yes meat for dinner = a privilege for the privilege.

Must remember not to get above my station.

*Privileged.

Anyway i thought battery hens had been banned since january 2012

Lentils for the poor, free range chickens for the rest, doncha know. You're only allowed to eat meat if you have enough money to be conned by marketing to buy things you don't understand buy overpriced not very ethical anyway meat.

OP -I f you really cared about animal welfare then you wouldn't eat meat at all.

Anyone thinking this Is getting like the hunger games? The poor of district 12 have no meat lol

We all best crack out the bow and arrows

I'd be quite happy to catch my own!

I'd happily pay 60p difference to buy free range, I always buy free range eggs (on the grounds that the chickens have a longer life span to be miserable ) but round here the difference in price for chicken is far greater than that. I wanted a free range chicken recently and it cost £25!!! from my local butchers! I nearly passed out! I can buy a large chicken from Iceland for a £5. I suppose that the issue with OP is not that people who shop in Sainsburys are wealthier, but anyone who can afford to pay for a precooked chicken is wealthier - they cost SO much more than the raw ones.

I don't entirely understand the "I don't care about animals, I care about people" argument - either they're two separate issues, in which case you should care about both, or they're interlinked, in that a society which treats any living thing like shit (be it a chicken or a cow, whatever) is one which is capable of treating humans like shit. I bet animal welfare isn't great in Sudan.

I'm not explaining myself well here, but an uncaring society is an uncaring society.

Why should you care about both? You haven't said.

We don't treat animals like we treat humans, so I don't see your analogy. We don't eat people, for a start.

I spend over a tenner on my chickens - it's worth it to me so I go without other things. However dp and I both work so we are not struggling to pay the bills - I would never judge other people for their choices.

On a political level though, I think it would be no bad thing to raise standards of treatment of chickens such that cheap chicken was no longer available - even if this meant that some people would not be able to afford to eat chicken as often. £2.50 for a life is too cheap.

What is it with people thinking poor people should be forced to be veggie? £10 for a chicken?!

Hardly a 60p difference.

I've still yet to be convinced that 'free range' is really free and happy chickens.
I thought they had like a tiny bit more room

I mean you are still KILLING IT
As if this government hasn't shit on poor people enough now we want to restrict access to meat.

It's so fucking ridiculous!!!! Sorry children sob no meat for you tiny Tim, you have to have lentils from the food weighhouse

It's the poor who would suffer, disadvantaged kids and adults, disabled people on dla? They can do one rather than afford chicken?!?!

And you claim that the people who aren't up in arms about chickens don't care about people? You are delusional

I put roughly 60p in a cancer charity box today and thought of this thread! I know where I'd rather give my money in a chickens vs humans war for my spare change!

Can I please ask the people pleading poverty how many times a week you eat your cheaper than cheap meat. Twice? Three times? More than that and you can damn well afford to make a choice so stop pretending otherwise.

And am I seriously the only person on this thread who can see and taste the difference? Unlike some others I can think out of my own little bubble and I care about animal welfare, but it is correct that at the end of the day they are all killed horribly for our enjoyment. It stands to reason, however, that a bird/animal thatcan move around freely and us slower growing will have more higher quality muscle making better quality meat. It's plain common sense. The flabby slimy stuff produced in horrific conditions to pass for meat just turns my stomach quite frankly.

This thread's - umm, interest in the costs & profits of poultry-rearing led me to check on the progress of something I remembered from a few years back ... poulard. Yes, folks, it's chicken leather! Supplying neatly-cut skins to the leather industry would add approx 75p per chicken to the farmer's profits. This would, theoretically, allow the farmers to keep the birds in nice big barns (which is better for the birds than 'free range', in case you didn't know). Fatter chickens would yield bigger skins, giving the farmer even more incentive to keep 'em healthy.

Poulard is now being manufactured regularly ... in South-East Asia. It is, therefore, exotic and commanding a high price from the European fashion industry.

All together now ---- :: head-bang ::!

I know someone who considers the cruelty of taking young calves from their mothers makes the dairy industry immoral.

@piglet it's not just the taking of the calves from the mothers. It's the drugs pumped into the mothers to increase milk yields. The consequences of the drugs. And so on. The dairy industry is vile.

Gaelic sheep why should we have to make a choice? Why should anyone judge us for the choices that we make when shopping? We all have our own principles, and it is up to you to follow them, not judge others who may choose differently.

Pleading poverty...oh do fuck off, you sanctimonious preacher. None of your business how often the plebs eat meat.

How many sheep & cattle do you think you'd see in English fields, if there were little call for their meat and milk? Thousands of animals are BRED for our consumption. Breeding = getting a life, even if it's not a life you think you'd choose. Hardly any of them would exist if we didn't want to eat them.

I've got to say I don't like battery farming, and was glad the laws were tightened up. But I am grateful for it. Without it, I'd be even more unhealthy.

To use those word 'pleading poverty' you clearly have no fucking idea.

I was going to buy some chicken joints today. Once I'd checked my budget I realised I have £10 to last till wednesday so I didn't. I have food in so we won't starve by any stretch but I haven't cooked meat since last weekend.