Comments on: Meat should cost more

By: Well, that’s all right then « Musings from a Stonehead

Well, that’s all right then « Musings from a Stonehead — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:04:02 +0000

[...] to import cheap flowers from Kenya, cheap peas from Guatemala, cheap asparagus from Peru, cheap beef from Argentina, cheap chicken from Thailand, cheap clothes from Indonesia, cheap electronics from China and so on, [...]

By: Food supplies face a squeeze « Musings from a Stonehead

Food supplies face a squeeze « Musings from a Stonehead — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:18:18 +0000

[...] Back in August I wrote that: Grain prices have doubled for farmers, while surging demand for biofuels combined floods in some parts of the world and drought in others have led to greatly reduced availability of cereals. [...]

By: Hedgewitch

Hedgewitch — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:40:17 +0000

Agre with all the comments especially wooden head. We raised a dozen ducks last year and provisionally sold them. After looking after them, killing them and plucking them we realised that actually no one could give us enough money for the work, effort and actually, emotion invested in them. So we kept them our selves and as with the chicken, made the most of every bit!
With Christmas coming up I cannot convey how much it offends me the endless turkey jokes about how there will be turkey sandwiches for every more and then you ‘just throw it away don’t you?’ Well no actually I don’t. For a start I would choose a free range turkey such as Kellys if I were to have a turkey and then I would select the size I might realistically actually use. Then I would use it for meals afterwards and make soup and stock until it was all gone, having saved some for my cat. Throwing away food is morally wrong, throwing away something that has died so you can eat it, is unforgiveable. Perhaps if people paid the true cost of meat, they might stop binning it after a meal.

Our plans for Christmas meal are….. enter a local supermarket (yes yes I know thats bad) about 2pm on Christmas eve. Proceed to cheap shelf. Select which ever free range/organic meat has been drastically marked down (it doesn’t sell well in this area). Proceed to check out with afore mentioned Christmas dinner. Plan B (have never had to put this into action yet) cheap shelf empty, buy a full priced alternative or ransack freezer for a piece of gloucester old spot produced by a friend and defrost.
WHY do we do this? Partly as a little revolt against the concept of the perfect Christmas dinner, with its timings and its endless pages written about it, partly because we are cheap skates, but mostly because it comes as a lovely Christmas suprise every year. Last year there were geese on offer in the cheap shelf, the year before, free range bronze turkeys. We’ve also found hams and beef. You just don’t know what you are going to find. It’s like a big lucky dip…. Sadly we are not the only cheap shelf connisseurs now, we all shuffle furtively round the supermarket eyeing up the sales staff who have mark down machines….. converging like a flock of seagulls when the food is stacked on the trolley, grabbing stuff, saying, how much will this be? We have no shame.

By: thurstongarden

thurstongarden — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 10:11:43 +0000

People also need to spend more time with good quality food - how many cuts are bought for just one meal, with a good proportion of that meal ending up uneaten and in the bin?

I bought an organic chicken last Saturday for £7.53. We got roast chicken, chicken pie, chicken and bean quiche, chicken sandwiches and a pan of stock, half of which made chicken soup and the other half was frozen.

I bet most people who buy the £1.99 factory chicken roast it and have it for one meal. Sacrilege on two accounts!

Pay more for locally, ethically produced meat and give it justice by using it to the max!

By: Woodenhead

Woodenhead — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:22:43 +0000

Another problem for those of us that raise animals on a human scale, is the fact that anything we purchase is basically retail, while anything we sell is expected to be priced wholesale.

Take care.

By: Angela

Angela — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:42:22 +0000

People are funny - they’ll pay £800 for a trendy puppy, and 100s on Sky TV and gadgets, yet look for cheap food and wont pay more for quality.

I decided after the BSE crisis (which Ive probably got CjD from as I was a poor student living on own brand pies in those days!) that there was no such thing as cheap food - someone pays for it, probably the farmer/producer and certainly the animal.

Since then I wont wherever possible touch meat I dont know about, and find it far more exciting to spend more on food than on gadgets.

So keep on trying to cover those overheads and explaining to people that welfare and cheapness cant live together