My eldest boy did ask will you eat Pandora? Or is it an egg thing only?? Do the eggs taste different?
Pandora - cover your ears!!!! No, she's not for the pot, she's an egg girl only, although I'm told Marans make wonderful eating birds as well as layers. In the future Sean and I will be moving out to the country and I would love to be able to grow birds for the table as well, I'd know they had a wonderful life, which is the main thing, but could I kill them? The gutting and plucking isn't a problem, it's finding the most humane method to 'do the deed' quickly, there are a number of methods home rearers are allowed to use, but each has it's 'cons'. I'll probably decided when we actually move.
My girls are too young to lay yet, but the eggs I get from the farm are the best I've ever tasted, the supermarket free range eggs don't even come close.
His other question was "prove to me that any chicken I eat ISN'T brought up in these conditions? Do we get a step by step life history of each chicken?....I doubt it and probably a lot of people are paying more money for exactly the same thing with a different label"
He's a law student btw not a small child.
Obviously we have to rely on the honesty of the food source - this is why I no longer buy meat/fish/poultry from a supermarket. I have had a guy in the supermarket swear blind the fish I wanted was swimming in the sea that morning, yet a quick sniff of it proved it rancid. The meat I have bought from there in the past has been awful.
Your best bet is to find a good butcher who can tell you exactly where his meat/poultry has come from and how they were kept, the good ones will be bothered about things like this. We go to a farm shop and local farmers markets to get the majority of our food and the quality is so much better, and a lot of the time it's cheaper than the supermarket.
But another thing about chickens being brought up in these conditions, apart from the humane aspect, is that they are full of FAT. They aren't the healthy bird a Free Ranger is, so people thinking that they're doing good by their children and family and feeding them this instead of red meat are being tricked into thinking it's a 'healthy option', when it isn't.
It's all down to education and choice, a lot of people eat these cheap chickens because they don't know about the conditions they are kept in, but unfortunately there will always be people who don't care, which I find really sad. We're never going to get rid of the cheap broiler chicken, but it would be nice if more people went over to the free range or, even at a push, the 'freedom food/RSPCA approved' option.
Fiona - I feel very, very strongly about this topic, but am 'minding my manners' and trying to be polite so this thread doesn't get closed on my account :wink2:
Jackie
