dismayed at a t3$c0 free range chicken

[snapdragon]

t'dragon says - hock burns could be caused by bad management, and often means the chicken has been raised in an area where it was sqatting in poo/urine because it was raised to put on too much weight too quickly - this would acccount for the bad joints too.

The burn effect to the breast could be electricity too high in the 'stun'

remembering many classed as free range are not raised as one would expect

[cideristhefuture]

they are selling 3 birds for £10.00 today...

makes my stomach turn, wanted to say to people who had them in their trolley.. hey do you know what life this animal had, but doubt they care as little money about.

know it's not for all but i buy from a butcher and never have a problem. less food miles as they are from a local producer, believe it or not they cost a lot less.

[gregorach]

I've heard that too, but the partially cooked portion of the breast on this bird would have killed the animal had it been an electrocution, so unless they go to the field, scoop up dead chickens and then ready them for sale I'd be surprised!

Possibly caused by the electric stunning before slaughter then?

[mrsflibble]

so is Farm Assured better then even though they might not get outside access they are more likely to be well looked after?

[snapdragon]

Can't advise on that MrsF - I believe all 'farm assured' tells you it's a british farm reared bird.
I buy from my local butcher who buys locally wherever possible.
Chickens in supermarkets should have a code which annotates the farm they were reared on, so if you find a good one it would be an idea to look for your next purchase with the same code.

note from t'dragon - DEFRA should be able to tell you what code relates to which supplier/farm.

[clare]

This all sounds so awful.....I will be looking more closely at my purchases next time.I buy a whole freerange chicken from Aldi for £4.99 and have always found them ok.2 Freerange chicken breasts are £2.99 at the moment.

[mrsflibble]

aldi it is then! lol!!!

[boboff]

Its not good to hear of this rubbish purchase.

But you guys who said about all 21 year olds, fobbing off etc, you are so completley off the mark.

All suppliers are approved by the independant British Retail Consortium, they set standards far higher than the Environmental Health, and a key part of that is that customer complaints are recorded, actioned, and trends analysed and again acted upon.

All Supermarkets will refund you, and replace the product, what ever your complaint. The supplier will then get a bill for this refund plus a charge of £50 or so to cover administration. They will have to write formally back to the supermarket within 21 days normally with a full report into the investigation of the complaint, and what they are doing to stop it again. If they fail to do this, they will not be a supplier for much longer.

It is taken very seriously by the supermarket and the supplier.

Trends especially are looked into, and it is never acceptable to defend poor quality with "its' cheap"

Most suppliers will have customer complaints as a KPI, and this will in general have to be lower than one complaint per 10,000 items sold. So you must complain, it is taken seriously, by complaining you are helping the supermarket improve the performance of it's suppliers, and stop it from happening again.....

Did I ever tell you about the year we supplied a supermarket with over 100,000 kilner jars of fruits in liqueur and I forgot to put the opening instruction on the label? No well 5000 people couldn't work out how to open the jar and complained.... it was a rather expensive mistake to make that! Or about the store in Manchester that had a huge level of complaints of gone off smoked salmon that was on special offer at Christmas? Well we went to the store and found them loading the ambient dump bins by the till with our smoked salmon..... Phew Wiff!

[Silver Ether]

Now none of this surprises me as I can for the life of me see how enough birds can be reared to sell them as they do .. its like the free range eggs the amount that M&S use .. how many eggs are laid in the country that are free range and yes I am aware there are levals of free range ....

glad we got a real butcher in fact two ...

[mrsflibble]

Luckily I have discovered we too have a butcher, finally. Crazy Dan's House of Meat. Yes. that's seriously the name. oh wow, he has a facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Crazy-Da ... 04?sk=wall

it's not accesible directly by car, but there is a carpark... but as i am cheapskate i would prefer to go on foot!!

I went in today and I have ordered my xmas turkey crown (not free range, responsibly farmed though.. couldn't afford the FR turkey crown; even the bacon on top is resp farmed too) and my Yule duck (free range AND responsibly farmed) with Dan's very own guarantee of quality.

his chickens (FR and he personally knows his supplier who happens to be the brother of one of Dan's staff members I think) are cheaper than asda so guess where I'll e getting my chicken from now on? he's worth the walk to be honest.

shop is bright and clean, you can see the butchers doing ACTUAL butchery out the back and they REALLY know what they're on about when it comes to the meat and the welfare standards too. his resp.farmed pork and beef are on a par with asda or T***o too. didn't check his lamb, a massive queue had formed at the special turkey ordering counter while I was discussing meat with them!

[The Riff-Raff Element]

He looks like a nice sort of chap! A good find, I think.

[mrsflibble]

I'm just hoping he sticks around longer than the last 2 butchers we've had.