Saturday, April 08, 2006

Its a question of quality

I am not sure about your thoughts but I am concerned that there is meat available in the supermarket at such a price that it is just too cheap to eat. A chicken at £ 2.99 just cannot be quality. I am not sure how long it would take for a chicken to actually grow from egg to table ready but it cannot be less than 40 days surely.....and what do they do to these chickens that they grow so far...actually I probably do not want to know. My question is, am I prepared to either be a vegetarian and eat no meat or eat meat responsibly. By that I mean, I am willing to find out where my food comes from, how it has lived and what the quality is like. I ask this question because I wonder what it does to my body to be flooded with angst hormones from an animal.
I have looked at the benefits of not eating meat and although I am reducing the amount we eat while at the same time sourcing locally produced traceable meat, the price of this is a lot higher than what is available. If I continue to buy the £ 2.99 chicken then the supermarket will think I want this and produce more. Actually what I want is probably a more expensive happy chicken and that will not be available there.
My friends cultivated their own chicken supply one year, bought 15 chicks and brought them on until they were way past the normal table weight, but when we received one of those as a gift, the quality was fantastic, we actually ate less of it because it was better quality and a chicken could last 4 meals including making stock for use in soups. It took more than 40 days, it took care and pasture to let these chickens roam and have a happy life, it took them to be killed there and then, with the least possible stress. They did not get foampacked, injected with hormones, strung up by their legs awaiting to be killed. I know which one I would prefer.

I am really sorry if you are a vegetarian and this post upsets you....and if you are a meat eater and this post upsets you....it upset me too....and that is why I believe I need to look at making changes because I want a simpler, less tampered with food supply and I want to reward the people who look after animals and not those who could not care less and produce a bird for less than £ 3.00.

1 comment:

clairesgarden said...

I agree, if your going to eat meat it should be produced as kindly as possible. there is no need for what they do other than their own need for profit.