to ask MEAT EATERS if you buy free range or standard chicken?

[Granllanog]

I got attacked on my last thread for saying I buy standard supermarket chicken. Considering only 4% of all of the chicken produced in the UK is free-range and only 1% is organic I don't think I am unusual in doing this?

YABU = I'm a meat eater and only ever eat/buy free-range chicken.
YANBU = I buy standard chicken.

We've increased the welfare level of the meat we buy as we've got older and been able to - we definitely spent a lot of years eating the basics because we had no money.

We're very fortunate now that DH has a friend who has a farm (with truly free range chickens amongst other animals) and we buy from her. Similarly, MIL has chickens who have free reign of her whole small holding so she supplies us with eggs whenever we see her.
The difference in taste is amazing.

It's a very hard issue to crack I think - because 'free range' in the supermarkets is not the same as the free range people want to buy (like MILs chickens who have a hen house, field, woods that they use).
Plus, finances in a lot of households are getting tighter so free range / organic is just out of a lot of peoples reach.

On top of that you have the general approach to meat, as mentioned by pp, that people don't want to know anything about the animal they're eating, how it lived / died etc so deliberately choose not to think about it.

Just looking up on-line that only 3.5% of chicken sold in UK is free range, but 98% of MN's apparently buy it .

Normal chicken here.

@BigWoollyJumpers

Just looking up on-line that only 3.5% of chicken sold in UK is free range, but 98% of MN's apparently buy it .

Thanks for the stats. Is the mn one accurate? Do you have a point to make?

I buy standard. I am on benefits so affordability is the priority for me.

@XenoBitch

I buy standard. I am on benefits so affordability is the priority for me.

So why not buy cruelty free alternatives then?

@HarrietsChariot

Whatever's cheapest usually. Though I've stopped buying Morrison's cheapo-chicken because the texture changed, the breasts I used to buy started becoming "harder" (for want of a better term).

Organic and free-range are just terms to make wealthier people pay more, they don't actually make a difference in welfare standards. And frankly, who cares? They're just chickens!

This is absolute bollocks. Standard chickens are raised in massive sheds with no access to the outdoors. Free-range chickens do have access to the outdoors, and organic ones require your farm to be certified by the SOIL association. There is a massive difference in welfare standards.

As a rule of thumb, I avoid chicken, pork and salmon generally unless not only free range but also I know the Providence. Grazing animals tend to, be their nature, be farmed less intensively. Even free-range standards are pretty poor generally and they are still farmed very intensively. For example, the EU/UK standards for free-range eggs are 26 hens per square m! Waitrose free-range pride themselves on a mere 19 hens per square m!! I think that even 1 hen per m square seems poor.

We buy organic free range and have cut consumption to 2-3 times a week from daily.

@TooExtraImmatureCheddar

They have access to the outside but are still kept very very crowded. Welfare standards just really arent that high here.

@XenoBitch

I buy standard. I am on benefits so affordability is the priority for me.

That's why we've cut our meat intake so we can afford cruelty free!

Affordability is an excuse not a valid reason any more.

[quote TheWoleb]@IsabellesMissingSock

Do you have nothing better to do? Just bugger off and leave people alone.

Chicken should not be a food only available to those who can afford £10 per bird. It is utterly disgusting to tell people struggling on a low income that they cant have a bloody chicken. They wont be out there buying steak, very unlikely they'll get to eat salmon etc. A lot of children will only eat chicken, rightly or wrongly, so leave them alone you horrible, selfish person.[/quote]
Not really, I'm on hols and it's cloudy and my husband is working so I'm killing time. Last I heard this was a public forum, so why should I bugger off on your say so?

Also, if you do buy cheap chicken, look out for hock burns. Most will have them on their legs if you look. This is caused by them sat unable to move in their own urine, which then eats through the skin and causes incredibly painful ulcers etc. They are also often surrounded by dead carcasses. Why would anyone want to eat anything raised in such revolting conditions is beyond me, even if you don't care about animal welfare.

Been free range/organic only for over 20 years now.

Only eat meat occasionally now though, chicken maybe once a week, red meat once every 1-2 months. Get it from a local organic producer whose farm I’ve visited.

I mostly buy free range from the butchers. However if I buy supermarket chicken I tend to buy the regular chicken. In my experience supermarket free range organic chicken is horrible.
My butchers had to close due to Covid isolation and I ordered some of the Duchy organic chicken, a whole one and a couple of packs of mini fillets. It was all were tough, chewy and tasteless and cost twice the price of my butchers free range whole chicken.

I raise, slaughter and eat my own, the same as I do with rabbits.

[quote TheWoleb]@TooExtraImmatureCheddar

They have access to the outside but are still kept very very crowded. Welfare standards just really arent that high here.[/quote]
That is just not true. My dad used to have an organic free range chicken farm, and the chickens were let out every morning to range in the field. They had a lot more outdoor space than they wanted to use, and the sheds themselves were designed around the size of the birds. Chickens huddle together for warmth at night, so even in a bigger shed they still cram themselves into a corner. They got moved into bigger sheds as they grew, and all the sheds were movable so that when the grass got trodden down inside them, they were moved to a clean patch of the field on a rotation. But they had access to a field to wander around, and they did - very few stayed in the shed all day.

@IsabellesMissingSock
@regthetabbycat

When you are the one doing my shopping, paying for it, and then eating it, then you can have a say.

The meat in my dog's food is certainly not free range organic etc. Most ready meals (which I find useful for days when I struggle with the basics) are not free range.

Threads like this go to show how middle class the demographic of mumsnet is.

Alot of you obviously don't shop to a tight budget!

It's the cheapest in my house.

@Shitfuckcommaetc

Threads like this go to show how middle class the demographic of mumsnet is.

Alot of you obviously don't shop to a tight budget!

It's the cheapest in my house.

No, I don't shop to a tight budget. I shop to an ethical one. As has always been the case, even when money for me was tight.

if the conditions that these chickens are reared in is so unacceptable why aren’t the farmers themselves, the supermarket and indeed government demanding better conditions for them It’s ok for the people who spend all day every day in contact with these chickens to watch them suffer in order to make money, but for those of us down the line wanting a cheap meal for our family have to shell out 3 times as much for one who has been able to wander freely. Fuck that.

This is truly the maddest shit I’ve read today. You are happy to buy better chicken if the government bans cheap chicken, but you won’t do it voluntarily because ‘fuck that’

@Sparechange

if the conditions that these chickens are reared in is so unacceptable why aren’t the farmers themselves, the supermarket and indeed government demanding better conditions for them It’s ok for the people who spend all day every day in contact with these chickens to watch them suffer in order to make money, but for those of us down the line wanting a cheap meal for our family have to shell out 3 times as much for one who has been able to wander freely. Fuck that.

This is truly the maddest shit I’ve read today. You are happy to buy better chicken if the government bans cheap chicken, but you won’t do it voluntarily because ‘fuck that’

Very good point.

@TooExtraImmatureCheddar

That may be how your dad did it but you seem to be ignoring the government standards. People can call their chickens free range yet keep them in what a lot of people would still call crowded conditions.