@BoreiPuriHagafen for the first time in many years in the UK people are having to spend a higher proportion of their income on food. That will increase because of the implications of Brexit, the pandemic and other global impacts like the price of oil.
I believe that is not good. You might think it's a price worth paying.
My reasons are that the economic burden will weigh more heavily on the poorest people while the rich won't notice. Which ever way you cut it, that is not fair. I' m not just talking about people who light cigars with £50 notes. The reasonably well-off, not-rolling-in-money types like you and me and many other people on this thread will take the hit without any significant impact on our lives.
It won't lead to higher standards of animal welfare.In fact it will mean poorer ones. It will mean that all us but disproportionately the poorest among us will have proportionately even less money and less choice on what to spend it on. Not just food but other essentials like housing, heating and travel costs to school and work which have already gone up and will only rise further.
It won't be good for the economy because when people have less money to spend on essentials they cut back or delete entirely their spending on non-essentials which leads to shrinkage of the economy and people losing jobs which in turn leads to more people who have to worry about money and feeding themselves.
Price is a powerful tool to force a change in habits. Sometimes it is welcome. Smoking rates have been steadily fallen in the UK since successive governments began to significantly increase duty on tobacco.
It's about 14 per cent on average though some parts of the country and some ethnic or social groups smoke more. To me that is a price worth paying in terms of the savings to the NHS and the reduction of misery that smoking-related illnesses cause. But I would say that because I've never smoked and neither does anyone close to me so it will have only benefits for me.
Using price to force people to change their eating habits makes me uneasier even though I can see human health and animal welfare benefits. It makes me think of people telling lesser people to do as they are told for their own good which conflates with: "this is what we think is good and we're in charge."
I eat meat and vegetarian and vegan food because I like to cook and there are lots of wonderful meat-free meals. But I'd think differently if I had to feed a child who said: "Urggh! It's a chickpea. I want chicken nuggets." Especially if I couldn't afford to throw away food and had to think very carefully about how to get nutrients, particularly protein, into my child.
It doesn't matter how much you earn an hour. Surely anyone can see the difference in price between the OP's Morrisons chicken on offer for £3.33 and a Tesco Finest one for £8.25 you recommended as an alternative. And surely anyone can see the problem for people who don't have £5 to spare.
If you really can't then it's not just cooking lessons they should bring back in schools but budgeting ones. And they should tack an empathy module on to the curriculum while they're at it.