How important is it to buy meat from our local butchers? Do we get better quality service and better quality meat? Should we be supporting local businesses and local produce, over the convenience and cheaper price of supermarket meat?
What about those of us who buy our meat from local farmers markets or farm shops, there are other alternatives from the two options given.
A quality butcher would be my choice over a supermarket, but some large chains of butchers are no better than supermarkets and source their meat from intensivly reared animals as well.
-------------------- Just because it works, doesnt mean its safe!
I know of a butcher who used to work in a small butcher's and now works for a supermarket. The cuts are the same. Is the meat not sourced locally from the same suppliers as our local market butchers? Does anybody on the forum work for a large supermarket chain and would therefore be able to advise if the meat is sourced from the local abbatoirs or if it is centrally produced in factory farms?
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do" Benjamin Franklin "Some cause happiness wherever they go - others whenever they go" Oscar Wilde
The leading supermarket chains tend to have their own slaughterhouses and cutting plants so even if the animals have been farmed locally, if the abattoir is not in the area, the animals may have travelled hundreds of miles to be slaughtered in a large scale abattoir.
Small local abattoirs are unable to deal with the vast number of animals the supermarkets require to be slaughtered.
Having said that, some independent butchers buy their meat from wholesalers who source their meat from all over the country and even the world.
However, there are still some butchers around who not only source animals from local farms but operate their own abattoirs so that the distance animals have to travel is kept to a minimum.
If you want to eat meat that has been produced locally, ask at your supermarket, farmers' market or your local butcher not just which farm the animals came from but where it was slaughtered.
It is also worth remembering that if you buy your meat prepacked in a supermarket and see a Union Jack on the packet this does not mean the meat inside has been raised, slaughtered and packed in Britain. Under current legislation, meat can be imported and undergo some processing in this country and still use the Union Jack.
Many thanks for the information on your post Becster. It has given me "food for thought" I will certainly be asking the butcher at my supermarket more questions.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do" Benjamin Franklin "Some cause happiness wherever they go - others whenever they go" Oscar Wilde
I am a partner along with my brother in a butchers business which has been voted Englands best independent Butcher. We source our beef from local abatiors who buy from local cattle auctions on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Our Pork is free range from the Yale of York and all our Lamb is free range, by its very nature, from the Yorkshire Dales. We also sell a range of Extra mature beef which is reared on the vale of York. Apart from the fact that we know where our products come from, and that our meat is prepared by skilled craftsmen, we also give customers an exeptional service. It is this fact alone that makes it worth shopping in a good local butchers. Real warm customer service has become a thing of the past. If you find a good local butcher, start shopping with him and make yourself known, once he realises that he has gained a new customer he will go out of his way to give you the service you deserve! Some people visit a butchers once and say "it was nothing special" but it is all about building up a relationship and trust. Once you have acheived that you will never look back. As a good place to start look at members of the Guild of Q Butchers at www.guildofqbutchers.com. These are the elite butchers who are forward thinking and move with the times. Not all good butchers are in the Guild of Q but all butchers in the Guild of Q are Good! John Green wilsons Butchers, Leeds
Having read the replies from Becster and John Green I am considering buying all of my meat from the local market separately from my weekly supermarket shop. Many thanks to you both. I will let you all know how it goes.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do" Benjamin Franklin "Some cause happiness wherever they go - others whenever they go" Oscar Wilde
use it or lose it is the message hear,supermarkets are only interested in one thing.....money , and the quicker they can get from you the better,that is why the do not hang there meat the want it on the shelf and selling so quality suffers supemarket meat is so new a good vet could get it back on its feet. every man to his trade,if your toilet backs up you get the plumber you don't go round to the supermarket. so if you want good quality meat provided by someone who is trained in the cutting and preparation of meat you go to the butcher
don't be a supemarket zombie blindly throwing pre packaged rubbish in your trolley, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUTCHER
I could not agree more that we should be able to source our meat locally, either at a local butcher or a farmers market etc. But living in Taunton where we have 2 independent butchers competing wwith all the major supermarkets i am dissapointed to note that their pricing is astronomical and service poor. There needs to be a desire from butchers to compete in the market place in which they trade, they need to re-educate customers and welcome them, not hide behind their counters and smirk when all you want is 250g of cubed pork or a single breast of lamb. If they curl up in a corner and give in then the supermarkets will win, and we will have no choice. When all th elocal shops are gone the supermarkets can charge whatever they please for their water filled rubbish.
I as an amateur cook - not I do not say would be chef - would ALWAYS buy meat at a good local butcher. Simple really.
They can advise on good cuts for what you want and whenever I go in I usually go in the day before and if they have run out of stocks - a normal thing in a good fresh local supplier I order for the next day and receive fresh meat! And I do mean fresh - sometimes wonder where the blessed hooves are lol.
Sometimes a local butcher may be more expensive because better quality products do cost more. The supermarkets are responsible for a lot of the insipid lean meat produced today because they told the producers that is what they wanted in the past. If like us, your butcher buys carcasses which have a more generous covering of fat, to make the meat tasty and succulent, then first of all he has to pay a bit more for the best product and secondly, when you remove the excess fat before you sell, this also pushes up the cost. (This might sound contradictory, but you have to have the fat covering to get the marbeling which is where the succulence and taste come from.) As for the person with the smirking butchers, it is best to go into your butchers and lay your cards on the table, ask them if there is something you don't know! If they don't treat you with dignity and help you with your purchase then they are not worth your custom! John Green www.wilsonsbutchers.co.uk
Good meat comes from animals that have been well cared for and fed then slaughtered with minimum stress. The carcases need expert treatment to ensure that the quality is maintained. Even on telly you could see the high standard of the meat that came off Trinny & Susannah. You're not going to get that from cheap meat. And don't get me started on what the supermarkets try to pass off as higher quality stuff -"matured" beef for example, not properly hung as a good butcher would. There are now so many opportunities to buy good meat (Farmer's Markets, internet and the remaining local butchers) that there's no need to swell the millions that Tescos, Sainsbury's etc are making.
Apart from the welfare connotations of intensively reared meat, we're really depriving ourselves when we buy less than the best. I have friends who raise a couple of pigs a year - fed organically, and they free range - and the meat from their animals is vastly superior to any pork I've bought in a supermarket. It's almost a dark meat, and full of flavour - a million miles from that pale tasteless pap they sell as 'pork' nowadays.
I would rather pay more for good meat, and eat it less often, than get cheap stuff that tastes of nothing. When I was young - in the 60s - a chicken tasted of something, and it was a real treat - we were lucky to get it once a week. Now chicken is so bland you have to find a way of tarting it up, rather than relying on its own flavour.
I am what Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall calls a 'conscientous carnivore ' - yes, I eat meat, but I make myself aware of its origins, and will not support what I consider to be inhumane methods of rearing and/or dispatching the animal in question. I think Gordon is doing a brilliant job, showing how meat gets from animal to table - and I really hope that all those who find it outrageous use that outrage to change their buying and/or eating habits - whether that means turning veggie, or just taking more notice of the provenance of their meat.
All the comments here have been really interesting and quite thought provoking.Many years ago I would always buy my meat from the local butcher,and as said elsewhere, the meat was of a consistently high standard.The butcher would give advice on how to cook it , especially with the cheaper cuts,and I had a young family then and not much money,so it was welcome advice. The atmosphere in that shop was always welcoming,with the butcher showing my young sons how to make sausages. This was in Penzance in Cornwall , but when we moved to the midlands we lost all that personal touch , or perhaps it was that I was then working full time and thought I did'nt have the time to find a good butcher, certainly there were supermarkets there I'd never seen or heard of compared to just a couple of quite small ones in Penzance. I lived in France for a time ,and there you find the "old "type of butcher in every town and village.Here in Spain,nada, good food is hard to find. On visiting my son in Poole I was pleased to see that they buy locally and I thought the prices were really good and the produce looked excellent, so perhaps people are turning back to what it was ,and giving the finger to mass produced tasteless rubbish.People Power !!
Most definetely. The taste is totally different to the meat at supermarkets.Some supermarkets are better than others, but the taste, the smell and the quantity of fat that runs out of the meat is different. Although it cost's more, it's worth it and you feel better for helping a small business.
Some time ago I posted a note saying I would be thinking of using a local butcher instead of the supermarket. I also said I would update on doing this. The information I got from Becster and John Green were instrumental in my doing this. I think perhaps my local council must have been in the forum as they have now put forward plans to put a large supermarket next to our open and covered markets which contain many small butchers and fruit and veg stalls. I am whooping with joy as this enables me to shop in one stop and enjoy both the market for meat and veg and the superstore for other groceries. Well done the town planners. Long live the small family butchers and fruiterers!
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do" Benjamin Franklin "Some cause happiness wherever they go - others whenever they go" Oscar Wilde
Originally posted by Lemon drop kid: Some time ago I posted a note saying I would be thinking of using a local butcher instead of the supermarket. I also said I would update on doing this. The information I got from Becster and John Green were instrumental in my doing this. I think perhaps my local council must have been in the forum as they have now put forward plans to put a large supermarket next to our open and covered markets which contain many small butchers and fruit and veg stalls. I am whooping with joy as this enables me to shop in one stop and enjoy both the market for meat and veg and the superstore for other groceries. Well done the town planners. Long live the small family butchers and fruiterers!
Unfortunately at your local market some of your market traders will not see your joy as a price war puts them slowly out of business.
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Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? ...He's a mile away and you've got his shoes.
Keelers are graziers in Horsford on the Holt road and they produce, quite simply, the best meat I have tasted anywhere! All their beef and lamb is from their own farm and the pork is from a local farm and is
