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.

Yuk I’d be really unhappy about Chinese chicken.
That said I do buy chicken breasts that are frozen and come from Poland. I buy it for the quality, I don’t know why but I find Polish Chicken to be superior quality ? Taste/ texture.. less plumped up and watery.

Sorry but this is nonsense. Much of Holland is not good growing land, it's land that is reclaimed from the sea at great expense and land that is increasing difficult to drain and defend from flooding. What the Dutch do really well is intensive agriculture, esp rearing meat in indoor units.

I agree. Stop fuming, vote with your purse and seek out local suppliers with ethical practices.

I can't imagine what conditions the animals and the workers endure in China if that imported meat is cheaper.

Always check your labels.

Some butchers/farm shops really capitalise on the automatic assumption its local that's not checked Thus have allsorts of far flung meats

There's a large farm shop in Scotland that has quite the social media following that sells huge quantities of chicken from Poland. Perhaps it's changed, I don't shop there anymore. I got no answer when I asked them about it.

There's also a butcher with a fairly big name (and a bloody enormous house) who started off like a normal butcher shop but the last time I went there everything was prepackaged and when I asked for something that wasn't in the front shop (that shouldn't have been too unusual for a standard butcher to have) I was told I'd need to pre-order it. I haven't been back there either.

Another organic farm shop that charges very high prices for its hopefully high welfare meat - the sausages have so much rusk in them it's like eating the shavings off the shed floors.

What the Dutch do really well is intensive agriculture, esp rearing meat in indoor units.

Dutch fruit and veg is grown intensively in greenhouses heated with their (once very cheap) North Sea gas. Most 'Dutch' pork is actually reared in Poland - lower input costs such as cheaper labour and land. The hogs magically become Dutch simply by virtue of being slaughtered in the Netherlands.

I agree
Vote with your feet and be vocal.
Let them know why you won't be back and tell your family and friends.

An acquaintance of mine who is fond of holier-than-thou finger-wagging about 'shopping local' once tried to explain to me that she was supporting local farmers because she bought pineapples from a farm shop outside Preston (in January).

There does seem to be a lot of self-delusion about food provenance.

YABU - they were clearly labelled; you bought them.

Unless the butcher mis-sold them, he hasn't done anything wrong. He's trying to make a living.
Is there a reason you didn't read the label before buying?

Butchers tend not to have meat prepackaged and labelled. It's normal in a meat counter with a price tag per kg.
The opportunity to read the label is quiet minimal in a busy butchers, esp if people a qued at the glass.

Try and find a genuine local farm shop if you can instead. We get our meat from one now and it’s worth the extra £! So different in taste, colour and texture to the supermarket offerings these days!

I would also be shocked at a butcher ordering in meat from China though!

@Needspaceforlego that's certainly how I'm used to a local butcher/farmshop operating, but I'm quoting OP's reference to the packaging - perhaps she could clarify.
We are usually very careful with reading labels, though (coeliac family, usually hunting for gluten-free sausages!)

(Can identify with your username 😀)

Still easier than trying to grow crops on a mountain side or a steep valley!

Go veggie or vegan, then it won't matter to you where the meat comes from.

@LoveHearts69

I would also be shocked at a butcher ordering in meat from China though!

They're not ordering it from China. They'll be getting it from their local wholesale butchers who'll be getting it from larger regional/national wholesale butchers.

If the wholesalers didn't have any UK chicken at the time, they may have had no choice but to buy foreign chicken.

This is why I find it hilarious when meat eaters kid themselves that every bit of meat they buy is ethically sourced, organic etc when the stats show more than 90% is factory farmed. So many assumptions made about 'local meat' to try to get away from the truth!

Our lovely local butcher here in South Oxfordshire sells chickens from Yorkshire !
I thought that was far enough !

If you buy chicken in a ready meal, tinned, cheap, check the origin China, Brazil,
where do you think takeaway chicken comes from, when you consider how many chicken based fast foot outlets there are, we cannot produce enough here to satisfy
demand.

My mum reminds us occasionally that when she was young, chicken was a luxury,
bought only if the rellies were coming, had to be ordered, long before Supermarkets,
when there were three butchers in the town, or at Christmas Dad would buy a capon, does anyone remember those?

Local butchers in this instance denotes location rather than source of chicken and I
would feel cheated of my expectations for sure.

eat pretend meat ie Linda McCartney factory produced pap

I'm so naive I would presume that all meat from a local butchers is from the UK. I'm disappointed for you.

How does that follow, or matter?

For supermarket packaging, farm names and the Union Jack logo are not a guarantee of British reared meat. Tesco have a whole range of products marketed under fictional farm names. To display a Union Jack on packaging, the product has to be produced in the UK, but the ingredients may not be of UK origin.
If looking at packaging, The Red Tractor logo is the one to look out for, Red Tractor meat is of traceable British origin.

even garlic in Asda and Tescos is China. 🇨🇳 m very picky about where I buy food now. We do a weekly shop at an independent butcher which only stocks uk meat from reputable farms but it costs more. We eat a couple of veggy meals in the week to balance out the budget.

Good stuff from Poland ! we are buying the pale Kujawski rapeseed oil at the moment, started off using it for frying eggs, now use it for everything except salads,
paprika, huge jars of pickles, many good things, from the bread basket of Europe
(and flour occasionally when we can source it)

@Inkyblue123 Waitrose and Sainsbury too, dry and doesn’t last long.

It is grown on the IoW, at The Garlic Farm, or wild along wooded lanes here,

I live right in the middle of the fens ( basically exactly the same farming conditions as Holland ) It has something like 70 per cent of all the grade 1 soil ( best quality, usually very high yields) and so is being bought up left right and centre by Danish, German and Italian companies. The vast percentage of root crops and sugar beet are grown round here , and it never floods , because the whole area is managed . In the recent flood warnings , despite the rest of the country being flooded , the fens had no warnings at all , apart from the seasonal road closure, when the washes were opened up.

I'm very fortunate in our local butcher. He lists where all his meat comes from and he's very picky - he'll even tell the farms what he wants the stock to eat. Which is why on any given day , he's got a queue out the door .

unscrupulous would be to remove it from its wrapper and pass it off as free range

caveat emptor has never had more resonance for us when purchasing chicken !