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

Actuakly, i don treally put a value on food with my kids,
i meant that i am as likely to offer fruit or sweets to the kids tbh.

But they ar in and out and frighting so i didn't phrase it so well.

and to the poster who thinks that i shouldn't wear lether because I don't eat meat- well, i don't think i do have any leather...
but I don't pretend to be perfect.

Waht i'm trying to say is there are problems with farming and how the food ends up on your plate,
and the argument that cheap healthy meals are made by cheap poorly reared meat is supruious.

I'm not saying anyone HAS to do anyhting at all. What i am saying isi THINK AGAIN if you think it is all healthy and nutritious.

That's all.

And fwiw it took 7 pages for that argument to come trotting out- muxt be record, usually it is around page 3

oh, and chickpeas and kidney beans come in tins.

The quickest meal in the world has to be
Cook rice,
Steam peas and sweetcorn from feezer.
Open tin of kindy beans
Mix up all ingredients in pan with some jerl/chilli
eat.
kids love it.

and it ins't too bnad if you get seasoning right for adult.

I agree that the budget chickens are vile. They don't taste like chicken imo and they are so watery. I have chicken less often now and buy a decent one.

With all the different foods around these days, you can vary your childs diet and be healthy without buying those awful cheap chickens imo, it just means alittle more imagination.

just thought i'd put my two penneth in

i have 4 children and really want to give them the best but on a tight budget it's not always easy. we tried to buy nice fresh fruit, veg etc but just found it too expensive. however i do buy organic eggs, they taste so much better for a start. i'm collecting my own chickens on friday and am looking forward to the lovely eggs. i do also buy free range meat whenever i can. it's not often but it is a nice treat. cheap meat and battery eggs are cheap for a reason and as others on here have said the animals are pumped full of all sorts of things that i don't really want my children to eat. as for saying they're going to die anyway so it doesn't matter how they're kept, i just think that is a type of denial. people don't want to know how their food gets on their plate because they can then detach the meat from the animal making it easier to eat.

harleyd and everyone else who doesn't believe me:

from one chicken we can have a roast, sarnies for packed lunches, a paella or risotto, a pie, and a soup.

Just for the record, I don't think anyone is picking on the the poor and I consider myself poor. After working in the animal welfare business for years I've just decided what's important to me. I'm not judging others. If I felt we couldn't manage then something else would have to give, not happy meat.

YANBU.

We very very rarely eat meat for exactly this reason. I don't know why people seem to think it's necessary to eat animals on a daily or even weekly basis. It is very much not okay for the torture that goes on to enable us to eat meat cheaply.

Going to go and read the thread now.

I don't often buy range meat, I will admit that freely. I would like to buy it all the time but I simply cannot afford it. The same as I cannot afford to always buy clothes which don't come from sweat shops, vegetables which have been grown locally, wood and paper which have been grown from sustainable forests, fuel and household products which don't pollute the planet and things which have been fairly traded. It's all fair and well just to say 'buy ethical, pay more but use less' but you can't apply that to everything. It is extremely difficult to live your life without harming any other human, creature or organism without dedicating a huge amount of your time to the cause.

Oops - I am the Leather Poster

I didn't say that people going on about the way meat is raised shouldn't wear leather, I was making the point that it is a bit to preach about the way animals are farmed if you use by-products of said farming techniques.

I am still interested to hear how many of the Free Rangers out there eat out in restauraunts and have meat - you can bet your kidney beans that most of them use the same meat that is detested so much.

'They can afford to buy Boden, but not afford to help the poor chicklets out

Really though, how many of you saying you can't afford to switch to free range, are sat there in your swanky homes, wearing your new boden top, with the little one running around in mini-boden drinking a fruitshoot? '

And you can afford to come on here and waste time ranting and scolding a bunch of parents about their choices when you have no kids.

Swanky homes and wearing Boden?

You obviously haven't read enough here, because not a day goes by without threads from posters who have lost their jobs (or their partner has lost his job) and they're in danger of losing their homes or in ever-increasing debt.

Lola, you really are taking the piss here.

Again, I don't eat non-free range meat or fish or eggs.

And we are working poor.

But I think threads like this ARE hitting on the poor.

Well, someone pointed out WE are all going to die anyway, but we'd be pretty pissed off if someone claimed it didn't matter how we are treated right now.

Several posters have pointed out they manage to feed their families economically without relying on foods from animals that have been ill-treated. So it is possible.

Maybe lots of people have just fallen in to buying value chicken and just need to think about alternatives - going back to the traditional roast on a Sunday, stew on Monday, sandwiches on Weds kind of thing.

And maybe schools should be teaching proper cookery, not ruddy food tech, so people know how to use brisket and all those unfashionable cuts of meat. (Although I can hear all the teachers sighing at yet another thing we expect schools to teach.)

My mother reckons she was taught to cook by our local butcher when I was tiny - he was great at suggesting ways with different cuts.

I only eat free range and for that reason don't eat meat when I eat out, easy.

SouthMum,

No - I don't drink cow's breast milk or any of it's related products.

I was brought up to eat meat and dairy products and only started to really question my actions after deep thought and reflection.

My basic philosophy is that it is very, very wrong for human animals to kill and eat non human animals. It is not necessary, is harmful to people's health, to animals, to the environment, and to the millions of people who starve in the world whilst keeping animals to feed other's demands for flesh.

It's not a question of perfection or nothing. It's a question of being as true to your beliefs as you can be.

And maybe councils should stop selling off playing fields to developers and make more land available for allotments, and quit giving permission to developers to whack up great lots of flats instead of family housing with outdoor space of some sort, and the government change things so that barely scraping by doesn't involve two people working their arse to the grindstone every day just to pay the bills, leaving them exhausted at the end of the day instead of feeling, 'Yeah, I want to cook!'

Threads like this just smack of the same sort of smuggery that usually appears on benefits and lone parent threads, IME.

Btw, this would only work if you have a big freezer, but my Italian BIL cares about the quality of his food so much he wouldn't buy meat from any supermarket. He gets half a cow from a local farmer every six months, has it butchered and sticks it in the freezer.

As a veggie, I find it hard to argue with his approach - he knows exactly where his food is coming from and that it had a decent life.

Not that i go around the supermarket looking in other peoples trollies I do wonder sometimes when they are loading their stuff up at the checkout why they have packets of biscuits/chocolate bars/crisps and then have a cheap, budget chicken?

Now unless they purhaps love the taste of those chickens, i wonder if they just want to save the money on the chicken to buy their kids the said biscuits/chocolate/crisps?

leaves thread and hides

the OP is unbearably smug.. and does not have children to feed.. so ,let;s have this conversation again in a few years..

i agree that we should all look at what we buy, and how it can possibly be so cheap.

has anyone been watching blood, sweat and takeaways? that will put you off your dinner

i buy happy chicken, eggs and milk. but if i could not afford it, i would not do without

such a victorian attitude. don;t let the poor enjoy chickne/meat/alcohol/sky tv/computers..

can't stand that attitude

let's have a debate about cheap food by all means, but not sticking the knife in to those who are already having a crap time

I don't think there's any smuggery on this thread. Lots of people offering ideas about how to feed a family cheaply without relying on low-quality, cruel food that probably isn't very good for your health.

havent read whole thread

i dont have the money to buy free range/organic anything but i do have to feed my family.

You are free to have that opinion, and I assume you have the money to buy freerange - congratulations, you are such a better person for that!

edam He only has half the cow butchered?

Some people cannot afford free range or organic etc etc. You buy what you can afford, and dont feel guilty about it. I don't. I'm not dead yet!

Read the thread, ginger, loads of ideas about feeding a family without resorting to cruel meat. Just changing one meal would be a start.

lola, you say "By LolaTheShowgirl on Wed 27-May-09 11:05:05
They can afford to buy Boden, but not afford to help the poor chicklets out hmm

Really though, how many of you saying you can't afford to switch to free range, are sat there in your swanky homes, wearing your new boden top, with the little one running around in mini-boden drinking a fruitshoot? '

WHAT A NASTY ATTITUDE

you have clearly missed all the threads recently about job losses, threats of redundancies, pay cuts and the general fear a lot of MNers are living in right now

you have had a lot of support from MN re lots of issues in your life, so it is very poor now to start nasty, patronising and insulting threads .. you need to take a deep breath and think about what you are posting

I watch it Lulu.

I posted it a bit further down but it got ignored!