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Original poster

campaign for free range chicken!!!!!!! Please.

593 replies

fordfiesta · 09/01/2008 17:22

Please check out www.chickenout.tv or watch Hugh's chicken run tonight at 2100 channel 4.
you can sign up for his campaign on the above address.... sorry dont know how to do the link.
If you have been watching the program you will know how important it is!
thank you.

OP posts:
MicrowaveOnly · 09/01/2008 22:27

soph I am with you totally ('cept cant stand tuna!), the % of battery chickens being sold is far greater than the % of very, very poor people.

So how many people are using money as an excuse ? loads.

hence my wariness at such a response.

and..saying we should worry about the income of the catering staff before the chicken is just a big fat red herring. get back onto this issue, or lie idly dreaming about utopia and doind sod all!!

Original poster
fordfiesta · 09/01/2008 22:27

Anyone up for raising their own chickens then (nutcracker i exclude you.... would love to see your garden now!!)

OP posts:
nutcracker · 09/01/2008 22:28

I would actually prefer to eat more fish than meat tbh, but I am never sure what to do with it, and that is also sometimes too expensive.

JingleyJen · 09/01/2008 22:29

nutcracker that is the question I wanted Hugh to ask the mum in the programme who continued buying the two for a fiver birds.

If she did have the money would she then buy the free range?

Original poster
fordfiesta · 09/01/2008 22:29

agree with microwave using the income of catering staff is a bit of a red herring and a totally different subject...... albeit an important one.

OP posts:
MicrowaveOnly · 09/01/2008 22:29

Ice..[concerned tone] why does your family eat so much?

VeniVidiVickiQV · 09/01/2008 22:30

I have some 'scraggy' lamb in the fridge Blu!

It's going into a casserole dish with A LOT of potato and onion and carrot

It's true what you say about using worldwide styles of cooking because rice, pasta, noodles etc can make a dish stretch really far.

That said, many half decent meals were cooked on rations 65 years ago. My mum still makes a recipe that my nan made - bacon pudding. Lots of bacon and sliced onion rolled up in a suet pastry. Served with a sauce made from milk, cornflour and parsley boiled up until thickened. It's one of my most favourite meals EVER. Also VERY cheap.

Blu · 09/01/2008 22:30

Nutty - sometimes the price is prohibitive. I look at FR organic chickens and think 'nah - can't afford it' - and have discovered cheap cuts of lamb. Not joints - lamb neck etc, shanks can be cheap at a butcher and are v rich and filling - can be stewed and the meat of one good shank shared between 3 people.

But Soph is right about less meat being better for us, really.

Will DS eat a lentil? No, he will not despite my best efforts to introduce lentils at weaning stage!!

Heathcliffscathy · 09/01/2008 22:30

agreed nutcracker.

and frankly the supermarkets have an awful lot to answer for on this front.

you know, the more people refuse to buy disgracefully raised meat, the cheaper happy meat will get.

nutcracker, i'm sorry if i offended you, i do think that moving towards free range chicken and ethically raised meat is a health as well as moral issue.

i do think that saying, 'i can't afford it so f*ck off' is wrong.

but i understand how much harder it is on a budget i really do and i accept that it is hard to swallow from hugh fearnley whittingstal that chickens are the be all and end all when child sex trafficking exists.

i do get that there are relatives at play here.

TellusMater · 09/01/2008 22:30

Fish can be expensive.

And is also an ethical minefield .

Phatmouse · 09/01/2008 22:30

I watched the programme he did where he got them all to live in tp's at his river cottage and convinced them free range was best. The lady he caught in the supermarket buying 2 for £5 was mortified she looked like she had really let him down, but the poor woman has two kids to feed and no lucrative cookbook deal on which to do it.

As it stands free range is a lifestyle choice and whilst I struggle to pay, rent, council tax, water rates and am one of the one's who are about to find themselves in fuel poverty it is not even a choice for me.

This lady was all up for free range on the last programme so if even she can't stay loyal due to price what chance do those of us who haven't had the luxury of hugh fernley whittless prattling on about birds having a nice life before we snap their necks, pluck their feathers, rip out their insides and roast them at 108 degrees.

prat.

GodzillasResolutoryBumcheek · 09/01/2008 22:31

A few more bales of hay wouldn't go amiss in that there enomous Co-op barn though.

nutcracker · 09/01/2008 22:31

I most definatly would buy free range if I could Jinglyjen.

Anyway I am off to bed now, quite worn out by this thread lol.

JingleyJen · 09/01/2008 22:31

my M&D have their own chickens for eggs we keep trying to get them to get some eating chickens but I am not sure I am ready to get that close to the process.

TheIceQueen · 09/01/2008 22:31

VVV - I throw in tins of beans, pearl barley, lentils etc too so that it makes the meat go just that little bit further, and loads and loads of seasonal veg.

I TRULY envy those people who can feed their children (or even OH!) baked beans on toast for dinner (or similar) and they're satisfied.

Similarly the person above who uses just ONE pizza for her family of 4....all be it with garlic bread.

Now if my family ate those kind of quantities we'd be not only eating meat "every" day - but it would be free-range organic that has it's own personal butler to look after it while it's growing

Blu · 09/01/2008 22:32

I have noticed that supermarkets don't stock scraggy lamb - lamb neck. You have to go to a butcher for it...where does it all go? Is it just TOO cheap for supermarkets to sell?

nutcracker · 09/01/2008 22:33

I have used lentils, although it was to bulk out a beef casserole, not alone, and tbh i cocked it up it was too thick

Carmenere · 09/01/2008 22:33

I agree with Blu and actually I was waiting for someone to make this point and I am going to go out on a limb and extrapolate that actually the demand for cheap breast meat directly relates to the decline in the ability of most people to actually cook.
There is a lot of people nowadays, and a lot of mothers who can't cook. they don't know how to cook cheaper cuts of meat so stir-frying strips of chicken breast is the closest they get to it.
I am NOT saying that anyone on this thread can't cook, I am just observing that this 'problem' of animal welfare versus cheap meat is a modern malaise.
Woman have had to go out to work to support their families/pay the mortgage/not go mad and the VERY valuable job they did in the home has not been replaced. No one is teaching our children to cook. It is not considered important any more, ready meals and microwaves are now a solution to the time poor problem and something has to give, at the moment it is animal welfare. It is a sad state of affairs.

Heathcliffscathy · 09/01/2008 22:34

supermarkets are awful and i'm guilty as charged as i generally shop in one.

nutcracker · 09/01/2008 22:34

Sophable, I was more confused than offended, but apology accepted

MicrowaveOnly · 09/01/2008 22:34

phat

stop being abusive - you'r following the rhubarb line again..just because hugh can afford free range doesn't make him or his humane belief a prat.

TheIceQueen · 09/01/2008 22:35

Microwave - I think they eat so much as they have bottomless pits as stomachs.......they're all as thin as rakes though . DH has a huge appetite (as does most of his family - think it must be genetic LOL) and the DS's seem to take after him!

I don't eat breakfast (well I lie - I do sometimes have a bowl of porridge about 11am) and haven't eaten dinner yet - just don't feel hungry!

DH has a HUGE bowl of Alpen for breakfast.......and keeps on eating from then on!

TheIceQueen · 09/01/2008 22:37

Carm - we rarely eat breast meat (unless I've bought a whole chicken) - perhaps once a month (if that)

MarsLady · 09/01/2008 22:38

Carmey.... I'll teach the children how to cook!

VeniVidiVickiQV · 09/01/2008 22:39

I've been seriously considering having my own hens in the garden for the eggs. I dont think we have enough space though. I'd have to give up my veg patch - which is probably more productive than the hens would be.

If we could move further out, which we may do next year, we'd definitely look at a much bigger garden so that I could grow more of our veg and have hens as well.

At the moment my veg patch is 1/5th of the garden and is 2m x 2.5m. I plant salad veg and generally stuff that arent cheap and plentiful in the supermarket. Dont bother with spuds or carrots - they are cheap and easily accessible but take up space. I've rammed in rhubarb, we have a small victoria plum tree in the front garden that was a birthday present from family (produced 50+ plums last year and is only 4ft tall ), I have a thornless blackberry that produces enough fruit for us to have fruit daily AND for me to make jam, blueberry bushes - an absolute must if you ask me that are very prolific, bay, thyme, rosemary, chives etc in pots. I grow beetroot, tomatoes, peppers and leeks. I still have 2 rows of leeks in the garden. They are keeping very fresh out there . They'll be soup very soon.

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