local farm shop with conventionally farmed meat or organic meat box delivery?

[BadKitten]

Which would you prefer ethically - a local farm shop with conventionally farmed meat or organic meat box delivery from riverford?

The farm shop has its own herds of cows, pigs, sheep and free range chicken. Abbatoir is 15 miles away and killed meat is returned next day to shop to be hung/prepared. It has good standards of welfare but the farming method is conventional. Farm shop is 6 miles away.

Riverford uses a range of local farms. The majority of the meat is organic. Delivery is very convenient for us.

Today we went to the farm shop for the first time. I bought the equivalent amounts of meat to that which we would receive in the meat box. The meat box costs us £46 for 3 weeks worth of meat. Today we spent £31 but we chose a brisket rather than the chicken so normally would cost around £35 for equivilent box.

We estimated our diesel cost was £1.50 to get there and back and we would aim in future to buy monthly.

So which would you choose - convenient, more expensive organic box or truly local conventionally farmed meat?

TBH the cost wouldn't really factor for me here. I am prepared to eat less of what I see as luxury food, eg meat, for ethical reasons.

My interest would be in which has the lower "footprint"

so-

How far are you from Riverford?

What is going to be the actual environmental impact of buying this non-organic meat? Farmers vary a lot. Are we talking a farm which is essentially organic, but can't/doesn't want to bother with certification, say? Or a farm which doesn't use organic feed, but does at least not drip feed the animals with continual antibiotics and growth hormones? Or is it a very traditional farm?

Animal welfare is the key issue IMO. You need to find out how the local farm rears its pigs. Pork farming can be almost as intensive as factory-farmed chickens.

Ask if you can have a look around the farm too -- if they don't want you to look around, that should tell you all you want to know. If the pigs are being farmed intensively, with no access to outdoors, shop elsewhere.

If the animals look happy and well looked after then I think you should support the local farm. Riverford may be organic, but it is a massive enterprise and not popular with many of the locals because of the sheer scale of its operations and its dminance in the area.

Well, we actually come under River norton so we arent that close to where they source meat.
The farm we tried today was
this one

What do you reckon? Good idea to have a look around and ask more questions though.

Yes i would but unfortunley we don't have a farm shop nearby.

So what me and my mum do is we ask my sister who has a farm shop on her way to work, so on a friday she get all our veg.

Have to say ggoing on that, I would eat there meat which is reared locally then ship in organic stuff. Suckler herds are a fantastic way to raise calves, very stressfree, the pigs look happy and under 2 litters a year is usual for a non intensive pig rearing unit, and they do exactly what they do with our sheep.

I think it looks great on the website BK, good idea to have a look around though.

Wish I had a place like that near me!

Very much in favour of supporting your local business if it's a good one.

thats great to hear. I wasn't sure if what they say on their site is good so I'm glad it is. So if they do what they say they do....

I'm thinking of asking them if they would show the brownie pack dd belongs to around. (then I can have a good nosy too!) Have to see if Brown Owl thinks that is a good idea though. They might say no on health and safety grounds though.

local farm shop

mind you I used to do a lot of work with local farmers so knew a lot of them and wouldn't have thought twice about buying from most of them; they were mostly caring and principled farmers

Id go for farm shop personally