To tell Dsis (9) that if she "won't sit at a table where people are eating non free range turky" that she can eat her christmas dinner alone on the balcony.

[honeytea]

My lovely adorable and slightly precocious little sister is 9 and has been a self declared vegetarian since she was about 4.

My family are coming to stay with us for Christmas and my mum has kindly offered to cook Christmas dinner which is fab as I am due to give birth on the 8th (but feel like the baby is happy in my tummy and won't be here till much closer to Christmas.) I was talking to my mum and sister today about what I should buy for dinner, they fly to us on the 23rd and we have a christmas day celebration with my DP's family on the 24th so I need to get prepared. I went trough all the vegies and stuff for a nut roast, then I said maybe I will get a big chicken instead of a turky and my little sister said well you had better make sure it is free range as I won't sit at a table where there meat that is not free range, I said to her that is fine she can sit on the balcony and eat her dinner.

AIBU and a nasty big sister, I will look for a free range chicken but I don't often buy meat and I have no idea if you can even buy free range chickens in the country we live in.

OP-does your sister agree all the food that your parents eat?

And if not, does she eat separately?

I think it´s great that she cares in this way.

It would also be great if there was no demand for non free range /eggs from battery hens because everyone could afford free range.

Zeebo and what a lovely, polite, tolerant person you sound! are you in the habit of calling children shits? would you tell her calmly and helpfully that she was spoilt and a shitty person? You're talking to her sister for christ's sake. If anyone said that about my younger cousins I'd be furious- and they're a handful at times, no doubt about it.

zeeboo "What a spoilt little shite " - What a horrible thing to say about a child with a social conscience!

You allow yourself to speak about a child like that, somebody's little sister, and you still think you can take the moral high-ground about "principles".

What a twat you sound, zeeboo...

Mumsy
Yeah, part of it might be because she likes the drama of it all. But if she's taken seriously and praised for taking a stand (although she could have done it less imperiously), it might grow into something really admirable and useful. If she's not patted on the back and fussed over, she won't be spoiled.

It's not a matter of affording free range. Egg/meat are not an essential part of the human diet. If you can't afford free range then eat eggs/meat less often/not at all.

"I can't help thinking the solution is not to serve turkey? Serve a traditional Swedish meal?"

Why shouldn´t OP serve what she & her parents would like to eat??

ItsAllGoing very true. We don't need that much protein. An adult female only needs 40g of protein a day- milk on your cereals is 8g of protein, so 20% is used up already. An adult male needs 50%. Less for a child. We're the only species that continues drinking milk after we've been weaned onto solids, when we don't need it, and we're nowhere near the largest land mammal.

Sorry, 50g for a male!

Tbh diddl I didn't get the feeling that op was all that bothered about serving turkey and I'm sure there's a response further back where she says the only person who has asked for it is DSD. Op also says she eats and serves meat rarely. Essentially I'm reading this as only two people in the family as being bothered about turkey IYSWIM. In which case, avoid the conflict and eat something else.

Because she's living in Sweden & can't buy chicken/turkey without supporting horrendous cruelty, if it's not possible to buy anything but battery birds, diddl.

Obviously if she's not in the least bothered by this, then it's chicken on the table & dsis on the balcony, & fair enough if that's her decision!

Or she could decide to serve a veggie meal this year; parents can have free range chicken any time in the UK, & OP can eat battery chicken when the veggie sister's not there.

I'm not saying it'd be wrong for the OP to stick to her guns & tell her sister to lump it, but giving the bird a miss altogether this once doesn't seem such a massive sacrifice to me, tbh.

Why is this even an issue? She's nine. She has no input in to the decision making process.

Just tell her what's going to happen and leave it there.

I thought that OP was going to look for free range anyway as it is available?

Sorry, missed about only one person being bothered.

I guess they´ll be having traditional Swedish fare at the ILs on the 24th?

I think it´s more the attitude of the little sister?

I´d be pissed off if I was told what I must serve in my own house by my little sister-even if I agreed!

I think the issue with that approach is that she's already said she won't be at the table if battery farmed meat is on it.

I have an 8 year old vegetarian ds myself. Not only would I not want to force him to sit at a table where, as far as he'd be concerned, I might as well be dishing up fricassed kittens, I'm not sure I could physically drag him there.

It certainly wouldn't be a very festive meal for anyone...

Beanie it's not an ordinary time though, it's Christmas, when you try to accommodate people as much as poss. If you were forced to witness something which personally upset you very much, would that be festive, wouldn't that make you resentful?

I think the OP's balcony suggestion is fine. Yes, it's not the best solution, but I think people's unhappiness at her being a few feet away is probably less than her unhappiness at having to sit through a meal which could be unbearable for her. Plus Chrismas is for the kids a lot of the time, got to admit it.

I know that over here there are no longer eggs for sale from hens kept in "battery conditions".

That´s an EU thing, isn´t it & also applies to UK?

Husband seems to think it´s also not possible to buy non free range chicken here either.
(Germany)

If so, that´ll soon be happening in UK also?

Make your sister pay for the difference in cost between free range and none free range out of her pocket money. Otherwise she puts up with the arrangement. She is not being asked to eat it. I would have much more sympathy if that was the case.

Instead she is just a spoilt brat who needs to learn a few manners when visiting other people and needs to learn that free range might not be affordable for all.

P.S. Make sure you have pigs in blankets too. I bet the little madam hasn't even considered that...

To be honest, a lot of the "free range" labels are horribly misleading. They might not be kept in cages, but a lot of hens still live in disgusting and horrifically cramped conditions. Unless you take eggs from your own hens that you keep and raise yourself, I'm not sure how sure you can be whether you're making a humane choice or not. And the misinformation doesn't stop there. The big battery hen campaign a while back celebrated as a big success I think managed to get cages enlarged from the size of an A4 page to the size of A3. Very sad and disappointing. Campaign lost momentum- hens got hardly any extra room.

Well that´s the thing-there´s barn reared(?)-but how cramped & how much outdoors?

Obviously better than battery.

But as you say, you don´t really know.

Teddy she's nine. So she has a lot of learning to do.

Part of that is learning to have manners, be respectful to other people and tolerant of their way of life.

Being a vegetarian does not give you the right to be a bratty little madam who dictates what people can and can't do.

There are ways of getting your view across without resorting to tantrums. She doesn't know these ways yet because she's in her formative years. This is where her mother should be teaching her.

I'm not saying she's not entitled to her morals on this one. And I don't think she shoudl be ignored. But this sort of behaviour is unacceptable and she needs to be taught that or she's be a horror!

The thing is, did we have factory farms a hundred or two hundred years ago? The demand for meat must have been so much less, because it was more expensive, was it to do with the creation of a middle class? Which comes first- the demand increasing and factory farms being created or prices dropping and the demand increasing? chicken or the egg we need an economist.

Have you seen video? it makes me laugh and cry at the same time

Honeytea - as far as presents are concerned...of course I would recommend you adopt a wolf for her.....ww.ukwolf.org. I recently reviewed a book called The Wolf Princess...which is really good. I was just thinking what to do with it...if you would like it, let me know. I would be happy to send it to her or to you...one little stroppy animal soul to another. Can also recommend some books on drawing wild animals....there are lots of things.

I still think that opening up the debate and talking about it all is fantastic, instructive and interesting.

I think that cultures that hunt meat, wear the offcut fur - that's natural, normal..the way of the world. Piling chickens up in a prison or giving a pig (an intelligent creature) a home in which he or she cannot even turn around - is not a thing I could ever condone.

Free-range gravy mumsy...wouldn't that be a bit.....messy?

Maybe you can give her a voucher for one of the nocturnal Wolf watching trips at the Wolf Sanctuary just outside London?

Reading Wolf Sanctuary