To think that if you cannot afford free range chicken/turkey meat and eggs...

[LolaTheShowgirl]

...then don't buy at all?

I mean the suffering these birds go through in cramped, dirty sheds is unbelievable. There is usually no natural light and the birds are usually ill before they're culled.

If you can stomach it, please look at these:
WARNING: NOT NICE PICTURES!
HERE

Yes but Lucia we haven't actually become a different species. I repeat my statement that I believe that humans are as selfish as any other animal.

We do these things because we can, people know about the battery chickens, they just don't care. You can't MAKE someone care, you can however inform them of the bad effects on them personally, I believe that this would have more of an outcome.

Morloth.

Ah but other animals don't have our capacity for speech, abstract thought or what we term "ethics".

You are right though. People are self-centred. Most of the time we don't even worry about those members of our own species that are suffering [except when it's rammed home through charity events or plastered all over the television news] let alone the members of any other!

However, I agree with you that people need to be educated as to what they are actually feeding themselves and their families.

Agree Morloth

Here's a link for anyone interested in personal health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

"People know about battery chickens, they just don't care."

Are you lumping us all in with that statement?

I know that I would rather eat organic chicken than a battery chicken, I know that I can't afford organic chicken compared to battery chicken, I know that my kids would rather go without than eat lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas, tofu etc. I'm not some uneduacated idiot who can't be bothered. I'm someone on a tight budget with fussy children. (Like a lot of others). What should I do?

I'm not liking the tone that the people who don't only eat organic are some lower species that know no better.

When my dd starts school full-time and I go back to work and (hopefully) we are no longer struggling as we are now, maybe I will sit high upon my golden pedestal and preach to the minions below

If you really really really cared helsbels4 and could not feed your family any other way you would starve, your basic animal need to survive makes this not an option, so you eat the battery chicken (even if you don't like it that much).

This is not a moral judgement from me I assure you. I obviously lump myself in with the rest of humanity. I don't care that much truth be told. I think humans are higher up the food chain and that the rest of the animals just have to lump it.

Sorry to simplify that last statement (which was a bit of a mess).

helsbels4 you care about your family's survival more than you care about the conditions chickens are kept in.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

oscar and lydia insist upon organic free range everything, though i do struggle to find free range quails eggs at the local co-op

There's also the factor of how much else you have to worry about in your life anyway. I have my suspicions that all the organic-food poncery is going to steadily diminish as the recession deepens: when you're scare your house is going to be repossessed, or fleeing a violent XP - or involved fundraising for refugee children or nursing a terminally ill relative, or writing the defiitive modern novel for that matter - you just may not have space in your brain to worry about your dinner.

I think that's a wee bit melodramatic - we're not talking about survival here, we're talking about choice. Your family is hardly going to starve if you don't feed them 50p chickens is it?

If you can't afford to buy free range chicken, don't eat it except as a treat. That's the way it used to be. Chicken used to be a luxury item until we started packing them in 3 to a shoebox.

I posted on riven's thread - it's £3 for a pack of organic free range mince from sainsbury's. That will feed a family of 4 two meals. Don't tell me you can't afford that.

At the end of the day, yes of course I do. I'm not thrilled by the rubbish that's in the cheap meat and it worries me - really it does - but when you have fussy children, what am I supposed to feed them that they will like, is nutritious and is cheap?

All I keep getting told is bulk it out with pulses etc but what if they won't eat that???

When I come to think of it, as much as all the Jamie Oliver type programmes made me think of the welfare of the animals, what I'm putting into my children bothers me more.

Having said that, are our children never to eat rubbish at all? Not at parties with rubbish chicken nuggets and other indescribable rubbish? Are some people so determined that their children will only eat organic only to have those children sneak off for some McDonald junk just as soon as they can?

It's just not always possible to be like that all of the time.

Lucille- quail can't free range by their vary nature well they can but don't live long and you would never find their eggs

No my family isn't going to starve if they don't get 50p chickens but what are they supposed to eat instead?

I choose chicken for my family because it is low in fat and the current guidelines are that you shouldn't regularly eat red meat. In fact, when I do buy mince, I buy steak mince and not organic because the organic looks fatty and horrible and the steak mince looks leaner.

My children don't like pulses etc, so am I supposed to just make them go without?

yes - we should try and introduce some on the country estate

"It's just not always possible to be like that all of the time."

No, it isn't and I don't think anyone should be made to feel guilty for that, which it seems to me is the point of the OP.

Yes quite Morloth . When both dh and I were working, I did buy free range chicken all of the time and organic meat when I could but our situation has changed and at the moment we can't stretch to that. Does that make me a good person then but a bad person now?

yes, YABVU

in all seriousness, i buy free range chicken but only about once a month cos it is treat. otherwise poor old dd has to make do with pulses and other nutrious food. why the hell do people think it is their right to buy cheapo pumped up chicken breasts in asda for 2p.

use your imagination and eat something else - bah!

That wasn't aimed at you Morloth but the people that are making me feel like a failure as a mother for poisoning my children with this junk they call meat.

Can I just differentiate between organic and free-range here? because people seem to be using the two interchangeably.

Organic is cruelty-free (supposedly) but also chemical free, and a lot more expensive.

Free-range is also cruelty-free (again, supposedly) but is conventionally farmed, and only a bit more expensive.

I'm not bothered about organic, but will only buy free-range.

LucilleMum2OscarandLydia, if your dd didn't like or just plain wouldn't eat pulses and "other nutritious food", what else would you feed her?

I keep asking people what else I can feed my fussy children but all I keep getting is "bulk it out with pulses". They don't like pulses!!! What else can I feed them????

Fish? Lean free range meat (or pour the fat off if you can't find it lean or it's too pricey - fatty meat has more flavour anyway)? Buy a whole free range chicken and roast it and then pad it out?

Battery chickens may be low fat but they taste of nothing and so don't go very far. You may as well buy Quorn to be honest. If you bought a big free range chicken (about a tenner), you could make two meals for four from one bird.

We also eat far, far too much meat as a society. Children will eat veggie pasta, tuna/sweetcorn baked potato, tuna mushroom rice casserole and beans on toast quite happily. All low fat, all cheap.

And solidgold - this isn't a discussion about organic meat I don't think, it's about free range. I don't think the benefits of organic meat add up very often and I don't always buy free range except for pork and chicken.

have to say i can never tell the difference... also seen severe hock burns on lots of 'free range' chickens

helsbels - does your dd have special needs. If so I understand your point.

If she doesn't then why pander to her fussiness. She'll eat when she is hungry.

Chickpeas can be pureed to make hummus and soup can contain blended pulses together with vegetables.

But some children,even those without special needs will starve themselves rather than eat a hated food,as a number of parents here have testified.

morloth, I think that your early point is important-
I was trying to tell peole that the cheap chickens are really not the low fat healthy option they think they are.

Bad for the chickens and bad for the consumer....

But people are so driven to eat meat that it seems they will accpet shit meat and not think of alternatives that a million times healthier.
I, too have a fussy child, god knows how that happened. But he is fussy about sloppy food so my life isn't too bad as long as the food isn't runny.
I do sympathise with parents of fussy eaters but my kids never insist on meat as they've never had any....

I also agree that as times get hard then more and more of what we eat as a society is less and less organice etc.

sad but true...
I have changed my shopping habits toally over the last yr- and buy bulk packets of pulses- very cheap and sustainable.
And we don't eat organice veg so much either- and often end up with the reduced veg at the end of the day- but of you cook it immediately then it's fine.

I'm not sure what new point i'm trying to make- apart form reiterating my old point of the cheapo stuff is just not good for you...and less good for the animals too.