Rachel Johnson's £32 chicken!

[Fifi2022]

Was listening to LBC discussing the cost of living or high salaries, can't remember what. Anyway, she said she bought a chicken from her local butcher for £32! She justified it by saying it was herb fed! I was flabbergasted to say the least.
Do people on a high salary really spend their money like this without any thought?

I've had to work hard to find a butchers where that is the case. Butcher doesn't necessarily mean better meat, several of our local.butchers just get stuff from the same place as supermarkets.

I'm lucky to have three near me where they literally tell you which farm everything was from, and you can easily check the slaughter house to know if it was a giant factory evil one or not. There are also some online ones you can do it.

When I earn more, I tend to try to up my quality of meat and dairy as a priority.

We had rescue hens and the poor things were in a horrible state. Non free range hens are pumped full of hormones to grow fast and are killed at 6w. A normal 6w hen is the size of your fist, feathers included.

I'd rather eat less meat than poor meat.

If Rich people do spend that on food i find it mind boggling

Her choice and nothing wrong with it. Her income has not been gained at the expense of taxpayers and through industrial scale lying, unlike one of her brothers.

Sounds about right. Some 10 or more years ago I ordered a duck from our local butcher. Forgot to ask the price, £45. Was more than a little shocked but it indicates the cost of hopefully good quality meat from a local supplier.

Local butcher to me is good but the best one is in a neighbouring village and it is very expensive but living just that mile away adds thousands to house prices.

I pay about £18 every other week for a 3kg organic one at our indoor farmers market ( and yes they have a local farm ) and yes it genuinely did 3 of us for Sunday lunch plus two ramens and a bit to add to a rissotto - they are extremely meaty and taste fantastic -

This database is worth perusing if you’re interested in sourcing better quality meat and poultry - or any other food. (Click on the Database, then right at the bottom of its opening page click National database. And view in landscape on a bigger screen than your phone.)

https://farmstofeedus.org/database

I can’t recommend it highly enough - it’s really transformative.

Yes.

Just herbs I would have thought they would need more food than that 😂 Rachel pretends she lives in the real world but I reality she is eating £32 chicken and not bat an eye !

I buy about 80% organic meat from an organic farm. Free range as the very least but prefer organic chicken so only buy every 2 months or so.
As a vegetarian I at least want the chicken to have a slightly longer life. We keep our own hens for eggs and under no circumstances even if DH wanted to too are own little pets for the pot.
We have about 5 who haven’t laid for years!

Yeah we in London have a money tree in the garden. 🙄

TBH when I first got breast cancer (27 years ago) I went OTT on grass fed etc. and paid £20 for a small organic chook (London)..still not quite over it ! We've all forgotten the real cost of good , outdoor reared, meat. 'When I was a lass' chicken was for Xmas and special occasions only.

The only reason that cheap chicken is so cheap is because they are kept in horrendous conditions. Yes, even the "free range" ones, which is barely worth the pretendy description.

You want cheap chicken? Own it. Take a look at a few videos. But please don't criticise others for paying more for better welfare chickens.

I use our local farm shop butcher. Recently bought a small, slow grown chook for lunch for three. It was £10. The meat was so dense and well distributed that we had three meals out of it. It was delicious and great value.

I buy a high welfare chicken about once a month for £20 ish (2kg). It serves two adults and a child for 3 dinners and a lunch. I only started buying them a few years ago and now I can't go back - I bought some supermarket chicken recently which was yellow stickered and it was completely tasteless. Might as well not have bothered.

Definitely worth paying more for me.

And there's me, being so pleased with myself for buying a £7 large chicken the other day and making a quite fantastic roast with it, for 6 people!

Free range chickens are £7 at my local butcher, not sure what you get for the extra

Sounds like RJ knows full well that's a lot ot pay for a whole chicken, she's not saying any different.

Chicken was the elite food until mass production processes made it cheap food.

"Free range" covers a multitude of sins. It does not mean good quality, or high welfare.

I bought a lobster today from tesco for £12.50 and im not even a high earner.

When I was growing up a chicken was a real treat and expensive. A joint of beef would be far more

I don't buy anywhere near 32 chicken however I do buy less and try and buy better chicken

^ This ^!

I used to hobby keep and breed a few large pure breed hens and the chicks develop slowly over months to get to maturity. Whereas the commercial breeds mature - I believe- in just weeks. No way could you make any money from traditional breeds kept free range with decent bedding etc for the price of a supermarket chicken.

Like a pP said no idea about the herb thing that sounds a bit hmmmm. Mine loved to peck on hung up cabbages and swedes and all run for the odd worm. Quite miss my chickens actually, unfortunately they were “got”one daytime. But hopefully they had good lives till then.

I heard Rachel Johnson and the chicken on another show, maybe hers, last week and yes she was surprised at the price and accepted she was in a fortunate position to be able to afford it.