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The chicken bit is a non issue for us since we have our own for eggs and buy free range for eating. We don't have options on anything much else. We're too old and feeble to grow our own vegetables anymore, what we buy from supermarkets in the way of fruit is laughable, and there is nowhere to but farm fresh meat. Our local butcher gets our business rather than the supermarket chains. At least our fruit trees are beginning to produce, although there is a limited range there, madarins and peaches and some strawberries. Living inland, fishing is useless since I have never mastered fresh water fishing, and besides, chemical biomagnification in fish worries me. At least here we have fairly strict rules on killing livestock, unlike the fate of much of our live export trade with Indonesia and the Middle East, where I believe cruelty in the slaughterhouses is endemic. I used to live near an abattoir, and you'd swear blind from the screams that pigs know exactly what is happening. I wish there were other ways to go, but vegetarianism is simply not for me, and believe me, I have tried several times. Lash

it matters a great deal to me. which is why I only buy free range chicken. I will pay the higher prices. it shouldn't be POSSIBLE to hatch, raise, house, feed, transport, slaughter, transport, package, transport and sell a chicken for £3 and still make a profit. when you see that price tag, you know something has to be very wrong somewhere along the line. and I want no part in funding that kind of farming.

Yes I think we do demean ourselves but the other problem is that they have so many mouths to feed. I am not a vegetarian but I do care that animals are treated in a manner that is kind and gentle. I keep 6 chickens that are all free range. I will never eat them because they are kept for eggs only. The farms you mention do this to save costs but it is not a good life for the chickens who need space. They have to be able to see daylight and be able to scratch the dirt. At night chickens all go to sleep and are easy to catch then. During the day they are almost impossible to catch and get highly stressed when you try to. Whenever my chickens have escaped I have had more luck herding them back to their yard than catching them. Even in a confined space they are hard to catch. I tried it locking them in their house when I clipped their wings but even in that small space they got really stressed trying to get away from me and these are chickens I can hand feed.

I don't eat a lot of meat for just that reason. I refuse to eat veal, whose treatment is even worse than the chickens. I remember when I was little my grandpa butchered a steer each year for the family. He was treated well, had a huge pen where he could run and relax and he got brushed every day. Grandpa fed him sweet feed and spoiled him rotten and I later learned he always shed a tear when it was time to butcher. That beef was the best I've ever had, raised with love. Same with their chickens and pigs, all free range and treated as royalty. I wish I could raise my own meat. I eat a lot of fish rather than beef or chicken or pork. When I do eat those three meats I just have a few ounces mixed in with some vegetables or in a casserole, doesn't take much to get the protein and minerals. People should know where their food comes from. They may not care but they should know all the misery they are ingesting. I can't help but think that the way we raise and grow our food might have something to do with all the cancers and other diseases we have been seeing since these practices started.

Of course. But whilst there are buyers clamouring for cheap food, producers will supply it. My personal thoughts are that anyone who eats meat should be prepared to raise and kill it themselves. I do appreciate that it's not practical for everyone to do so, but perhaps if people were a little more aware that meat does not grow shrink wrapped on a plastic tray they would appreciate it a little more.

Chicken always have its demand. now a days every body is eating non veg. Compare with other non veg foods, the chicken is very cheap and tasty so obviously it is in always demand. But we have to be as a vegetarian.

Every time I hear about the chicken/hog/cow/whatever farms I get angry all over again. I've thought about becoming a vegan but figured that my small protest wouldn't help stop the abuses. However, I do eat as little of any of it as I can. The meat (any meat) doesn't taste like it did back when we were getting it from the local farmers in this area. Those tastes are only in memories now and we'll never get them back. It's just all been ruined. Even eggs have lost their taste from what they once were. I don't know as we are demeaned so much as the whole food industry has deteriorated world wide over the past thirty years or so. It is so sad that the younger people today will never know what pure tastes they have been deprived of.

I really feel it is important to how exactly how the meat we consume is treated. It is no longer just buy and go, we really need to be a bit more conscious and demand better treatment of the animals. Sadly though marketing is taking its way where some who can't afford the best do settle for whatever they can afford.