www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29219843
Assuming you eat chicken at all, do you
1) Pick the cheapest
2) Pick the "free range"
3) Pick the "organic"
And whichever it is, why?
We tend to pick the free range, because we are aware of the conditions under which the cheapest are raised. It stings at the till though - couple of chicken breasts for one meal, £6 or £7 easy, thanks. So we don't have it that often. (I know it's cheaper to buy a whole one and cook it properly etc, but it's not really worth it for us.)
But as ever, I was naive - from the article above it looks as if free range isn't really that much better anyway. I never pick organic anything because to me that the "it doesn't use nasty chemicals" and I'm not convinced about that argument being true, or that "chemicals" are nasty anyway. Perhaps I've misunderstood "organic".
Where do you stand? And how do you feel about sausages...?
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If it's a whole bird preferably from the Farmer's Market or Pastures Poultry at Yardley Hastings. OTOH if it's just to be curried or casseroled it's the pack of skinned breasts from Aldi.
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We buy chicken breast fillets from Makro - 5kg for £20 and they are all now big proper fillets.
Two fillets tend to do our family of 4 when it is being used in sauce like a curry, risotto, stir fry etc.
Just pop them into freezer bags, and that's us for a month or so.
To be fair its probably the only thing that I now buy from Makro!
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I guess part of what I was trying to tease out was - if you choose to buy the cheapest, you obviously intellectually know the chickens have a rough old time of it compared to something running about in a primitive Eden (that doesn't actually exist but I had hoped free range was at least nearer to it). Horror stories about KFC "debeaking" their chickens whilst still alive so they won't peck each other (in the past now, I hope) spring to mind, along with various films of live male chicks being chucked into the rotating knives machine, which I think they still do. They don't need the males, hence...
So do you push all that to one side and feel guilty, or have you thought about it and mentally shrugged and said "yes, but it's the cheapest and I need/have/want to take that route".
Or maybe it's just me that feels guilty!
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I suppose I just don't think about it - yes I know the horror stories etc but I also know there are people in the world without water - but it doesn't stop me blasting my car with a hose.
I just accept there are some things in life that I can't control or really have any direct influence over!
Now if it was cruelty to dogs, that would be different...........
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Entirely depends on what is for.
We have a pack of cheapo breasts in the freezer, they are used for every day curries, stir fry, stuff where the flavour of the meat is not the primary centre. Don't care where they come from Battery farm, concentration camp, road kill, I have no affinity with chickens, wouldn't have one as a friend, dont care how bad their short scrawny scraggy lives were, they can all get stuffed as far as I care.
However when it comes to something more delicate with chicken, fillets wrapped in parma ham, or a roast for example I buy a fresh free range chicken.
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Cheapest for chicken:local indie butcher for bangers
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Free range and/or organic appear to taste better, and certainly makes me feel better about eating them.
But I suspect that none of them really have a very good lfe.
"Organic" just means they have been fed on certified organic corn. I don't think it says anything about their living conditions.
"Free range" is supposed to mean they they get most of their food naturally just pecking about in grass, supplemented by additional corn. But in practice I think it just means they have access to a cramped bit of yard but otherwise live in their batteries. They may still be fed on processed relatives
The only genuine fresh free range and organic chicken would be one that lives wild in a farmyard and field, and when the farmer herds them in he seizes one for you and wrings its neck.
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'Free Range' for meat production means that the chickens must spend at least half their lives with access to open runs, mainly covered in vegetation, with at minimum 1 sq metre per bird IIRC.
The reality is that they will spend most of their time inside anyway. What's outside is usually not very interesting, and the food's inside. Maybe there's also a lot of bullying in the playground - hens in close proximity are like that.
We don't produce meat, only a few eggs a week, but I can tell you that hens in small numbers with a garden to dig around in will be out from dawn until dusk given the choice.
It's hard to say what 'natural' for a domesticated farm animal but I'm not convinced that being on a shed floor at 13 to the square metre is that much better than being in a cage, having seen what properly free hens will do.
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We buy the packs from Lidl for chicken, very good they are too. Usually get a couple of packs and then stick them in the freezer. Not a big fan of sausages, so don't really buy any of them.
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"We don't produce meat, only a few eggs a week, but I can tell you that hens in small numbers with a garden to dig around in will be out from dawn until dusk given the choice."
Same here. It's a minefield, though, and I'm only too aware of the hypocrisy in wanting the best for our own birds, but turning a blind eye to the commercial operations. We are lucky enough to have a farm shop next door, where the chicken is at least locally reared on a relatively small scale, but then we blow it all by buying a commercial curry made with the cheapest chicken available, probably from Brazil!
The farm shop meat is noticeably better in flavour and texture, and they win awards for their sausages, which are so dense and unadulterated that you need half as many, making them better value than you might expect. It's worth visiting a proper butcher occasionally IMO, as it really can be a pleasant surprise.
If it makes you feel any better, a paleontologist friend of mine says that chickens are descended from the Tyrannosaurus, and I sometimes think I see that in their eyes when you pick them up...
Last edited by: J Bonington Jagworth on Fri 24 Oct 14 at 15:51
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We're off to the farm shop in Hazel Grove in the morning to collect half a lamb which SWM ordered a couple of days ago. They do great sossies and pies so we'll pick up some of them as well.
Then it's home via the caravan dealers to pick up our free range caravan which I took in last weekend with binding brakes.......under warranty, of course Otherwise I'd have sorted it meself.
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>>Don't care where they come from Battery farm, concentration camp, road kill, I have no affinity with chickens, wouldn't have one as a friend, dont care how bad their short scrawny scraggy lives were, they can all get stuffed as far as I care.<<
+1
You can buy a 'run about the field, scratch around in the dirt and eat cr*p' type round here that the farmer will kill for you but they don't taste any better and tend to be stringier, if anything.
The gipsies near here have poultry that wanders the roads and neighbourhood so I am now looking forward to my first taste of roadkill chicken or duck, maybe even goose if it's somebody else's car that hits it.
On the other hand, pork from the girl up the road who raises pigs in her back shed does taste nicer than supermarket stuff and doesn't cost much more but it doesn't do to talk about how she does it or what she feeds them on.
I've never understood this 'farmers' market' thing. I thought the idea was that farmers could sell direct to the public for more than they would get from a middle-man/supermarket but a bit less than the public would normally pay from whatever sort of retailer. But the reality seems to be that prices are sky-high and the sort of punters who want to be seen shopping there don't seem to care.
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"wouldn't have one as a friend"
They probably feel the same way.. :-)
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Well they will when they have read that.
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Chickens - which sort for you? - Bromptonaut
