I used to buy chickens that were expensive. (Not that expensive, but certainly £12-14) from a local farm shop, because I want no part of intensive farming. (It certainly lasted more than one meal). I had money and could afford it.
Now I do not have money and cannot afford it, so I don’t buy chicken (or meat at all, usually). £18 is about my budget for the entire week for two people. Me having less money doesn’t make it any less cruel or unsustainable. It’s a completely separate issue. Either it’s cruel or it isn’t.
Chicken was historically a middle income food, precisely because it’s expensive. Historically, the poor are very little meat at all. I don’t say we should go back to that, or that it’s right, but meat is affordable at all for many people (and certainly at the frequency it’s consumed now) only because the barbaric unsustainable factory farming has artificially depressed the price. Just as travel is only accessible to many people because of the low and unsustainable price and practice of burning oil. There’s no values attached to those statements. It’s nothing to do with class. It just can’t last forever.