Where do you buy you're meat

[perpetualworrier]

I am trying to move away from supermarkets. So far, I use a milkman and have a weekly veg box delivery. After that I am a bit stuck.

I have long being buying organic chicken & eggs, for the reasons in the public eye now, but they are from Tesco . We don't have a local butcher, so I would have to take the car out just to get meat, rather than have it delivered c. once a month by Tesco.

I would like to get an organic meat box delivered, but I can't find one that is reasonably local. Thay all seem to be in Devon and we are in South Essex. Does anyone have a recommendation or alternative?

On the basis Tesco must be getting (some of) their meat from the West Country, would I be as well getting it direct anyway?

Riverford (and their sister companies) deliver organic meat as do Abel and Cole.
I think Riverdene covers your area? If not, get a copy of The Ecologist. In the back are a whole load of adverts for organic places and deliveries and what have you. Its a great resource.
Having said that, go vegetarian. Its much more ethical

Thanks. Yes I use Rivernene for the veg, but they don't do meat?

Aren't Riverford in Devon? Do you have experience of Abel & Cole - I've had some not so good reports?

I agree re vegetarian thing and we don't have meat at every meal by any means, but not sure we can take that step to give it up altogether.

I use FArmers Choice www.farmerschoice.net they are based in hampshire and supply frozen free range meat but I'm not sure if they go as far as Essex.

I just checked their site and they say they deliver free all over the Uk (If you are an account customer paying by standing order I think)

I've been looking into organic meat boxes too...

Riverford delivers in my area (Bedfordshire) so I would imagine they would deliver around your area too.

www.riverford.co.uk/neworder/index.php

This page asks for your postcode and will check it delivers in your area.

Hope that helps

Just for curiositys sake..these boxes are delivered fortnightly,does that mean you get a box automatically every fortnight or do you have to order every fortnight,one of they're medium boxes would last a month so would'nt want one every fortnight iygwim?

Rivernene are part of Riverford anyway but they don't do meat as far as I know.

Could you find a good butcher and then just go once a month to stock the freezer up?

this may help you

We have a local farm shop but it has a very limited range at the moment.

Some of our meat is home-reared and I shoot quite a lot of rabbit in the summer.

We have neighbours that fish so frequently get given carrier bags full of sea fish or river trout.

We are self-sufficient in egg production and give them away to our more generous neighbours, unofficial eggs for fish bartering!

Despite all this I still have buy meat from Waitrose/Ocado, but at least they're the best of the bunch.

Duchess - that sounds wonderful, but beyond me at the moment.

I'm about to do this month's shop and as Ocada sent me a £15 voucher I was thinking of trying them. What makes you say they're the best of the bunch?

I go to our nearest farm shop once a month and stock up on meat and poultry for the freezer.

Farmer's market

local butcher

ah yeah we have a farmers market once a month also and I get stuff from there too.

Is it safe to assume local butcher's will have free range local meat?

I really don't want to drive to a butcher, pay more, only to find it is unethical meat that has been lorried in!

If I ask him (the butcher), he could just lie couldn't he? [don't trust anyone nowadays emoticon]

oops, apostrophe error

pw - Waitrose (and therefore Ocado) have a very large range of organic & freerange meat - as well as other products.

They do not sell fresh battery eggs and expect all their own brand foods to only be made with freerange eggs within next 12 months (quite a lot already are). They probably have the best farmer relations of any big supermarket - I have friends who supply them with organic lamb and they've been more than happy with Waitrose as a buyer.

Late last year they also started stocking some local seasonal foods, although it was very limited, I hope it was a successful trial.

Obviously I'd prefer to have local independent shops but realistically I have a choice between Ocado delivery, Tesco delivery, Waitrose (2.5 miles), Morrisons (2m), Lidl (2m) & Sainsburys (6m).

have you got a farm nearby?

I get ours fomr the butcher or the market

Riverford started doing meat recently. Maybe its sister companies would.
I've only ever had veg off Abel and Cole but found it way more expensive than Riverford and Somerset Local Foods.

noonmother - we have ordered our meatboxes every 3-4 weeks - you can set them up to come automatically but we vary how much we get through so we don't.

perpetual worrier - if you google 'essex farm shop' you may well be able to find a good farm shop like we did. See my thread about meatboxes v farm shop. I checked with the farm shop that it was all fresh so that we could bulk buy and freeze which is what we had to do with riverford anyway.

Oh that's worth knowing - there's nothing on the riverford webpage about the meat though (unless I am being thicker than is normal )

noonmother - we have ordered our meatboxes every 3-4 weeks - you can set them up to come automatically but we vary how much we get through so we don't.

perpetual worrier - if you google 'essex farm shop' you may well be able to find a good farm shop like we did. See my thread about meatboxes v farm shop. I checked with the farm shop that it was all fresh so that we could bulk buy and freeze which is what we had to do with riverford anyway.