Buying cruelty-free chicken! UK people?!
The RSPCA Freedom Food chickens are fine to buy and they're not as expensive as free-range - they're about ￡4 in my local Sainsburys.
Don't let money put you off! There's a cruelty-free alternative to free range out there.
Ask your local supermarket if they'd consider stocking them if they don't already!
Are you struggling to afford free range chicken?
Answers: Did you know that you don't necessarily have to buy 'free range' chicken for it to be cruelty free?
The RSPCA Freedom Food chickens are fine to buy and they're not as expensive as free-range - they're about ￡4 in my local Sainsburys.
Don't let money put you off! There's a cruelty-free alternative to free range out there.
Ask your local supermarket if they'd consider stocking them if they don't already!
Are you struggling to afford free range chicken?
Thank you for that information. People may also want to consider vegetarian chicken, well prepared it's delicious!
They also sell plenty of fake chicken which is 100% cruelty free. :)
It may perhaps be slightly less cruel than the full blown intensive barn methods.... but they are still far from free range in the cruelty stakes. They grow slightly slower, they have a LITTLE more room in the barn, they get SOME natural light and they have SOME potential distractions. They do NOT get OUTSIDE, (they do not even have to have sight of an open sky once in their entire lives), they are still encouraged to gorge on whatever is given to them and grow to an abnormal weight in an abnormally short time. Hardly "cruelty free"!
This may be a way for producers and supermarkets to make the transition to more ethical production, but it should still be discouraged and certainly not touted as a solution. At best it is a halfway house that benefits producers and supermarkets rather then benefiting either the consumers or the chickens. Sainsbury's is around ￡1.50 per kilo more for free range than the "traditional" intensively reared birds which works out at around the same as ￡2-￡3 per bird.
Sorry, but your mail strikes me as something in support of the method of the supermarkets or the intensive rearing of chickens rather than from a welfare, or indeed taste, point of view. I am not saying this isn't a step in the right direction, but please don't try and kid people that keeping livestock in this manner is OK or cruelty free.
If I ate chicken, which I don't I'd be willing to put out more money for a more ethical product.
I don't agree that freedom food is an alternative to free range. Free range birds are exactly what they are called. Free to range. Although freedom food chickens are a better option than abused standard birds, they have nowhere near as comfortable life as the free range ones. I totally agree with your point about the cost of free range but if more people bought them, the cost would come down. I am on a very low income with 5 to feed but would never dream of knowingly feeding my family ill treated animals. There are times when i cant afford to buy free range chicken so i buy "fake chicken" or we have something else. You don't have to eat meat/poultry everyday so if you got just 1 free range chicken a week it would only be an extra say ￡2.00. To recuperate the ￡2.00 we may have to cut out meet once every 3 weeks, something that we happily do to ensure the birds we eat haven't suffered