Do you REALLY buy ethically-raised chicken?

[morningpaper]

After reading the Emkana-eating-nuggets thread I was very surprised at how many of you claim to buy ethically raised chicken.

I DO buy is occasionally but it usually costs me between £10-13.

I don't BELIEVE that you all buy ethically raised chickens. Not for one minute.

Please justify yourselves.

I buy kind of ethically reared chicken

but not often cos like Issymum and moondog have said, beef and lamb are very ethically raised anyway so why not have some of that? I've worked with a lot of very caring and very professional beef and sheep farmers and I'd rather give money to their industry than to others since their industry has taken such a battering in recent years with foot and mouth, bse etc

beef and sheep farmers don't just rear sheep and beef, they also (well all the ones I knew do) do an awful lot of countryside management which as well as having a huge environmental impact also contributes to the success (and jobs) of the tourist industry which mostly sustains some rural areas

the care and love which they have for their animals and their business is wonderful

also the chicken farmer I saw most frequently I didn't like much

Yes, I do, buy organic and if not available, try to get free range.

I rarely buy chicken pieces, usually get a whole chicken about £8 (supermarket) - this does 2 meals - a roast, and then cold the next day. We have one perhaps every 2-3 weeks.

I also buy organic or locallly produced otehr meat as well.

We don;t eat meat at our main meal every day, probably every 2-3 days, because it's expensive, and I would prefer to eat less of it, better produced.

I only buy free range chicken and eggs. I wont even buy an egg sarny unless it is made from free range eggs. Makes luch selection in the shop a little limited though!!

my organic free range chicken from Sainsbury's comes in at about £7 for 1.5kg which does 6 adult and 6 child meals for us. Worth every penny. Free range eggs come from the man up the road.

Only buy free range or organic chicken. Medium, locally-reared free range from my butcher is about £7.

Also only buy free-range or organic eggs (organic if poss.)

Def. taste better imo.

We also have organic veg. & fruit boxes delivered most weeks.

The £1.98 chicken was smartprice (which I have never bought) and certainly looked fairly scrawny. I only looked because I was in that aisle and thought of this thread. I have never actually stooped as far as smartprice chickens.

My system is to have cheap meat (mince/sausage/bacon) once a week, expensive meat (a chicken/ham joint/braising steak) once a week, vegetarian once a wekk and make double with each meal. I had an organic chicken at the weekend, which did Sunday dinner for all of us, then I did with pasta and veg in tom sauce on Monday for DCs and me, and I have made stock and frozen some meat. It was a very small chicken.

I always buy free-range organic eggs now but not much chicken at all - when I do it tends to be 500g breasts on bogof and they are defo not organic .

Most of the meat we eat tends to be frozen mince and you don't get the cow's name on that either.

I only buy organic meat - and I generally try to buy organic for most things. However, how much I love my cat - I am not going to buy organic Whiskas pouches! WTF!

I was veggie for 20 years - primarily because of all the crap that is pumped in - I believe that this doesn't happen to organic meat, so now that I have seen the light I will only eat good stuff - esp now I have 2 dd's.

However, dp thinks we are a bit extreme with our eating habits - but I just want to give my dd's the best start - when they are older it will be up to them!

FWIW - I think (but don't quote me) that Hugh Fearnley - whatisname - said that lamb is the only meat that can be risked to be bought that is not 'organic' as most British lamb is well looked after etc.

I only buy organic chickens. A whole chicken costs between £8-14. It IS expensive but it does compel you to use the entire bird incl. carcass. I wouldn't buy cheap chicken - it's a much worse offence against animals than fox-hunting IMO.

Sometimes I nip out to the hen house and get a seriously organic chicken that hasn't cost very much at all.

But, at this time of year, it's even cheaper to shoot the pheasants which are ruining my vegetable garden.

Yes, only ever buy organic.

And never eat chicken in restaurants or buy chicken sandwiches unless labelled free range or organic.

(copied, but it's true !)

at last - Jan - why ?

I was on a farm once where the chickens were battery raised, and we saw the farmer throwing out two dead ones. We were walking past a couple of hours later, and the chickens had almost disappeared into a trail of sludge running down the yard. I often wonder how that happened? Anyone know? Is it 'cos they are just water and fed so quick??? I was too young to ask any questions and my mother didn't offer any explanations!

Because it seems hypocritical to care about the eggs' mothers' welfare but not the hens we actually eat?

I don't eat eggs

Oh I love eggs - fried, scrambled, boiled, omelettes - yum.

boiled eggs!

they smell horrendous!

think of the cholesterol!

Boiled eggs do smell bad I agree, but egg sarnies (with butter) are delish. And cholesterol is just one of many dodgy things I ingest (I do my best to balance it with vast quantities of red wine )

organic and free range are not the same you know.

you can have an organic chicken caged so tight it bleeds. feet sore and red through standing in its own shit and piss - the amonia causing the sores.

but it could be fed non harmful stuff from scratch and be an organic chicken.

i find many peole mix the two concepts.

you can have a chicken free as a bird ( who cant fly) lovely life - fed loads of enhanced shit so it gets big n fat.

still a free range chicken.

me i get my eat healthy packet from tesco - breasts only - for curry.

great question MP, mnetters a fkin liars.

i really, really do buy ethically raised meat.

I keep seeing this as ethnically raised meat.

SO do I!

Hotmama,do they really sell organic catfood pouches????

Binkacat,tell me more about this caveat.
Chickens only have to have been fed organically for the last six weeks?
Source please?

The weirdest thing is when vegetarian animals are fed animal matter.Lo and behold,we have BSE!
Is anyone surprised??

Animals only have to have been kept on British farms for the last 6 weeks to get the little red tractor on the meat labels - is it that?

But Custardo, surely you couldn't keep a bird in those conditions without dosing it with routine anti-biotics and so on? In which case it would not be organic?

I am pretty sure that EU baseline organic certification states that in order to be organic an animal MUST have access to outside areas. And some (not all) organic certification marks have stringent animal welfare conditions attached - the soil association for eg.