A medium chicken out of asda, guess how much??

[ssd]

Honestly, i nearly landed on my arse

The op started the thread about the cost of chicken I don’t think anyone has said that other foods should increase in price. People are buying the cheapest of food because that is what they can afford. Ffs for some there is no let up in worries the drudgery of life at the moment is overwhelming putting a meal on the table that the family will enjoy allows for some satisfaction

locally sourced well the only butchers around here are halal (always very busy) or the expensive organic butcher. We have farmers markets that I consider treat food as it’s expensive

And pumped full of hormones and drugs ? or water so it appears bigger it’s food and it will be filling and a nice meal can be made that is what many are concerned about

Funny you should ask, Hun, as I was thinking the very same about you. I thought you'd lost your way onto the wrong thread.

Off course it’s ok if you don’t share the same morals as others and even more ok if you’re not living the life of a hen that’s lived a life of misery. Some people may not want to feed their kids chicken with added chemicals so rightly will source alternative food to suit their budget.
Why the FFS attitude? Is that because you can’t accept that some people are different and have different views of what they eat and where their food comes from?

I never said that I never consider animal welfare when buying meat

but I have enough awareness to know that many are on such tight budgets a little extra is just not an option. Wanting to feed you family, bringing something that they will enjoy to the table is only an option when buying the cheapest food. If money was so tight for me that I can’t afford any treats, I’m sitting in a cold house, no holidays can be even thought about, worries how I am going to pay for food, my gas an electric, how will I buy children a clothes to then have to think about the welfare of a chicken just may not be something that would be on my radar

The problem is that chicken for some years has been so cheap that it has become a staple, even to the extent that it is eaten every day. And not just at home: look at kids’ meals (chicken nuggets), Nandos, thousands of dedicated chicken takeaways/small restaurants.

Thus people expect that it should be easily affordable, even when to keep it, well, cheaper than chips, the quality and welfare has to hit rock bottom.

Heaven knows where all this chicken is coming from. I can imagine that imports are from places whose welfare and hygiene isn’t as regulated as in the UK.

Small chickens are 3.50 now...

I agree.
Cheap meat means animal welfare has been sacrificed. A whole chicken was not cheap when I was little. It was an occasional thing for a more special meal. I can’t believe an animal can be reared well, killed humanely and sold for a profit at that price.

Heh, why are you bringing other things into it. I’m talking about chicken, not clothes, holidays etc. You are basically saying someone like me, lower income family, wouldn’t have time to think about welfare but clearly those on budgets do, yes I’m one of them. I am also not saying it’s on peoples radar but am saying I care about the welfare of the animal and budget to accommodate this.

We're moving back to a time when certain items are now luxuries but as noted above we've been conditioned to expect them to be staples. Perhaps people now need to reevaluate their shopping, cooking and eating habits - even more so if they have limited budgets.

As I said I didn't often buy whole chickens but I think I'll now buy them even less often and buy a more ethically sourced one when I do. If your budget is limited there are cheaper sources of protein anyway. Years ago when chicken was a luxury people having to feed families on a budget found other things to eat.

Welfare of chickens, all animals, all people involved in our food systems must be 'on everyone's radar' IMO...

the moral progress of a nation and its greatness can be judged by how it treats its animals

Being a child during Mad Cow Disease, and lots of exposes into McDonald's chicken scandals, I saw all this on the news and in the papers - and I felt sick that my school and parents and going round friends' houses had all been feeding me all this shitty low welfare turkey twizzler type stuff - and I had that realisation aged when I was 11.

There are appalling animal welfare scandals all the time, they get half-hearted news coverage and then swept under the rug.

We're brought up to not care or think about animal welfare, beyond what kids coo over at the petting zoo before going to eat a bacon sarnie in the cafe.

The cognitive dissonance is impressive and alarming.

If we can only make these links much earlier, in childhood, by visiting farms, factories and more sustainable methods of agriculture - like Open Farm Sundays - by teaching our kids about animal welfare, we will be much better at making more ethical and sustainable choices in meat eating and bringing up better children

No I’m not as I am in the same position single parent on a tight budget

but I do know families that can not afford just a little bit more money it’s simply not there that is not the same as a tight budget. I haven’t mentioned morals or suggested to anyone what they should be taking into consideration when shopping for their family I can understand why people simply don’t give it thought when they have so many other worries

Why wouldn't you want your children to be kind to animals, including the ones they eat?

when have I mentioned that my child shouldn’t be kind to animals

Societally, we don't bring up children to have eyes wide open in appreciating where food comes from, including the spectrum of welfare from intensive factory farming to organic. There's no curiosity or information about what 'farm fresh' 'corn/grass fed' 'outdoor reared' even means.

Hence, kids grow up thinking cheap chicken is fabulous and normal, but that they love their pet dog or cat, and then defend this strategy as adults to their kids - probably posting on Mumsnet that a six-pound chicken is too expensive - and so the cycle of cruelty behind closed doors continues.

Massive, massive cognitive dissonance. You cannot eat cheap chicken and love/be kind to animals.

That's a really good point about chicken being seen as a cheap staple now rather than a luxury. The amount of chicken shops round here that sell boxes of fried chicken for a couple of quid is extra ordinary, I dread to think where this chicken is coming from.

I would rather not eat chicken for three weeks, and on the fourth week buy a high welfare, free range chicken. We tend to eat vegan chicken these days - meat is rarity, as post-Brexit.

Someone mentioned upthread about 'being able to afford lovely principles.' Buying ethically is a choice we can ALL make, regardless of income. Yes, if you have enough money, you can buy an organic, FR chicken every day. If you have little money, your choices are limited, but even in my penniless student days, I'd buy a pack of lentils or some Quorn rather than a cheap, intensively farmed chicken.

I doubt anyone who doesn't give a shit about animal welfare and eating crap, chemical-stuffed animals will have their minds changed by this thread. But saying that poverty means you HAVE to eat cheap, pumped-up, cruelly-farmed chicken is BS and sets a lousy example to kids.

We should care more about the provenance of our food and what we're actually putting into our bodies. The nutrition/health/poverty gap is terrifying. A cheap, nutrition-lite diet knocks years off your life and increasing the risk of ill-health dramatically.

Rich, poor, whatever - eating shit, intensively farmed, over processed food is bad for the animal, the planet and your health. It's not about 'lovely principles' - it's a fact.

This government is stealthily doing it's best to hack away at any food safety standards they can, because no Tory minister is eating cheap, shit chicken and not one of them gives a single fuck about the health of the poor.

Completely agree.

it makes sense, why would they stop increasing the prices when they know we will all have to pay it. Apart from the meagre few who can have chickens and a large veg patch in their back garden, which would have to be a very large garden.

the supermarkets used to lower prices and lower prices and lower prices.
Those low prices drew everyone in.
They eliminate most competitors, small shops and small producers are all but gone.
now we are stuck with them and they know it! I I t think it was a decades long plan, but everyone put all of their eggs into the supermarket basket.

I t think it was a decades long plan, but everyone put all of their eggs into the supermarket basket.

Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? Now might be a good time to learn.

Question: why have food prices risen? It couldn’t be anything to do with raw material price inflation and increased energy costs, could it? No. The most likely explanation is that the world is being controlled by the supermarket illuminati. Christ.

@LisaLovedUp Apart from the use of growth hormones is illegal in all meat in the UK, so nobody is feeding their children chicken full of hormones.

This. Are people not concerned about the diet that these chickens are being fed? Cheap food like this comes at a price, people's health.

The OP was talking about a medium sized chicken though............. NOT a small one......

Despite the snide comment about supermarket illuminati below your post, I actually somewhat agree with this. Once you have a monopoly... this is one of my concerns about Amazon.

But supermarkets do compete with each other and aren’t a monopoly?

There is a lot less competition than there used to be and the big supermarkets have been fined for price fixing before. As have some European ones.