Local butchers importing meat from China

[Glitterybee]

AIBU to be absolutely fuming about this?

I spent a small fortune at a local butchers on Saturday and as I went to open one of the items today (chicken), I noticed it said on the pack ‘origin of meat - China’

That then prompted me to check all the packaging and none of the meat is sourced locally. They were all labelled as coming from either China or Poland.

I live in a very rural area with a huge network of farmers. Why on earth would a local butcher import chicken and red meat from other countries? I think it’s a disgrace.

Unless they clearly state where it's coming from, preferably naming farms, it could come from anywhere. Lack of red tractor labelling is another clue.

There's a nice looking butchers in my local town. But all the meat comes from Eastern Europe - I've seen the labels on the boxes when they've been unloading the vans.

I try to be careful re provenance of food but it does mean that meat is expensive and more of a luxury and that vegetables and fruit are limited at this time of year. I am not rigid though .

I shop online at Ocado. I only buy free range chicken. I have just checked my chicken ‘favourites’ on Ocado. They are all British.

I'll never understand the agribusiness. Holland is quite a bit smaller than Ireland and has 4 times our population. Yet we have Dutch potatoes - the irony - in our local shops , although the whole country is essentially a giant farm. Not seen much foreign meat though other than East European sausagy things.

If you live rurally, buy direct from local farmers wherever you can.

Green beans come from Kenya most of the year. Where in the UK do you imagine it will be possible to grow green beans so that they can be on the supermarket shelves from autumn to spring?

Annoyingly enough, in terms of transparency you are often better off shopping in the big supermarkets. It’s very easy to find where their meat is coming from and some of them are committed to sourcing all red meat and chicken from the UK. I’ve been so disappointed by smaller independent shops in the past where cheap imports are disguised by clever packaging as being “artisan” or local.

If you've got lots of local farms can you buy directly?
I get meat, eggs and potatoes directly from farms.

I'm shocked. I'd definitely go elsewhere. I was oblivious to this so I'll be checking when I buy from my local butcher!

I made the point at Christmas when there was a lot of snobbery around frozen turkey etc, that posters need to read the packaging on what they are buying. As for buying from farms, a lot of us would have to give up meat, because we can't produce enough for our population.

Farmers don't get backing on here, neither does local/national investment. The USA is going through the same. The Ukraine situation should have shown us that we need to keep our farming and industries active. At least with Aldi/Lidl, we can easily trace the origin of goods.

I'm very wary of butchers after a couple of incidents with the cheaper one in the village where their fillet steak didn't taste like fillet steak at all, yet it looked like fillet steak. They also short sold me on mince by weight several times. Then they refused to let me order a turkey for Christmas and wanted to sell me a turkey crown to freeze. In November. Whilst it would have been OK, I didn't want to pay £30 for that.
Like PP said, the meat could have come from anywhere. I understand that big supermarkets often don't pay a fair price to farmers but the products are at least clearly labelled.
We don't fully know exactly where an animal has come from or what life they had unless we reared and slaughtered it ourselves.

Have you asked the butcher why they do this? Maybe you'd find out that way.

Locally sourced, organic etc meat is a premium, expensive product(s) (set of products). Unless you were misled and sold Chinese meat at premium prices I don't think you have any reason to be angry. Just surprised. You've learnt something.

It is not all that unusual sadly.

I am in an African country so we are not short of space and have the right climate.

Yet most of our chicken comes from Brazil.

A huge amount of our dairy products are from Poland.

Good reason to be wary.

I feel very strongly about supporting local traders, farms and British produce, but I totally understand people's wariness. I think it's easier for an independent trader to rip people off, plus supermarkets have invested billions in persuading the public of their trustworthiness.

I also think some people find independents a little intimidating, and fear asking questions or looking silly.

Unfortunately I think it's easier to rip people off these days. People often don't know how to judge/tell good meat, they don't know the different cuts, or look at price per kg. And I'm sure there are all sorts of getarounds in terms of food labelling, that we have no idea about.

Grim. Where I used to work they marketed their beef as British. Half the time it was Brazilian and the rest of the time it varied wildly.

This is what Brexiteers voted for. Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch were crowing about the trade deals they signed. This is the result!

Same here, U.K. reared only.

As regards the OP, presumably it’s cheaper, and he thinks that most customers won’t care about the origin or animal welfare, as long as they can eat relatively cheap meat.

I’m a proud remoaner, but it’s been going on way, way longer than Brexit!

@Lambington I'm not convinced that products like Danish bacon are superior in terms of animal welfare.

There's a huge international meat market and there has been for decades. Chickens are broken down and things like the head, feet, heart, neck etc command a better price abroad. Consumers in the UK will pay more for thigh, breast, drumstick, "whole" birds etc.

Without this trade, huge amounts of usable chicken would go to waste.

Good advice @MushMonster
I live in Ireland where the Irish tricolour is put on packaging for chicken and other meats and the words Produced in Ireland put beside the Irish "flag".
Unfortunately produced in Ireland relates to the processing and does not mean the chicken, beef or ham came from animals reared in Ireland under EU laws.
It is a marketing thing and I believe it should be banned as it is very misleading.
If it says Bord Bia approved on the packaging then I know it's meat from Irish bred animals.

When I used various local butchers (before they all closed), none of their meat was packaged.

I would expect anything wrapped to not be local - nor indeed British.

There was an article on the news the other day about farmers from Yorkshire selling pigs trotters to China - exporting the bits we don't want to people that do makes sense, so I think some international trade in meat is not a bad thing. That said, I want my meat home grown, high welfare and organic so I buy direct from UK farmers that can supply that. However it means that we only eat meat once a week as its expensive, so there's that.

Dont like it dont buy it simple.
No need to be fuming about it.

It is often the same with honey, 90% of what we eat in the UK is imported and 80% of the imports come from China.