Wednesday
06Feb2008
LOW PRICES A HIGH PRICE?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 10:30PM
What's all this outcry about the fact that Tesco is cutting the retail price of its standard whole chicken to £1.99? The store says bringing down the price of a bird from £3.30 will benefit "shoppers on a budget". But - guess what - yes, Animal Rights groups and Farmers are up in arms against this. In essence, lowering prices to shoppers for key value items such as chicken is being portrayed as a BAD thing! Total rubbish - Tesco should be applauded for thissince it meets what many shoppers want. If others feel unhappy about this - then let them go elsewhere and pay more. But this is a counter-inflationary move at a time when inflation is a key economic issue for the UK, and the attack on Tesco is chicken-brained.
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Reader Comments (15)
"The only reduction we make is in the price - not the welfare."
If he can prove that, then fine. If he cannot then euggghhh! How can anyone eat those disease ridden, thug controlled creatures. Good luck with that. Id rather cut back on spending elsewhere to spend more on clean, fair farming.
If he can't prove it, he can be sued. I believe Tesco are being truthful.
I think the concern is that Tesco's is not willing to make a loss on these chickens, but that it will reduce the price it is willing to pay the farms for the chickens. I believe, (though I could be wrong) that giant stores such as Tescos are able to exert control over their purchase prices, effectively telling the suppliers "we will only pay you 99p per chicken from now on", and the suppliers can do little but agree, as Tesco's is one of their main customers. Without their custom, the farmers cannot replace that income, so they are forced to sell at below production cost, and therefore to go bankrupt just a bit slower than if they refused to sell to Tescos at all. (edit: and as the farmers struggle to absorb the effect of the lower sales price to Tesco, they will have no choice in the long run but to cut their own costs, meaning that inevitably, quality WILL suffer).
I do understand your approval of this from the shopper's point of view, and I'm always up for a bargain. But I think we must look after our farming industry too. I don't like the way the big supermarket chains gang up against small farms.
I agree Tom. Either way via supermarkets someone suffers. Get rid of them :)
Off With Their Heads!
I refer of course to the chickens and the animal rights protestors of the sale.
Mahons: I would have been an excellent Liz 1
"...clean, fair farming."
they're chickens, who cares about being fair to chickens?
Oh man I thought my comment would really wind Alison
up
99p per chicken paid to the farmer...not even remotely close. Divide that by a third and you're getting close.
The amount seems paltry.
The animal rights activists would rather people starved. We're cockroaches, according to them. No right to be here.
Eat a Tesco chicken a week and you'll be antibiotic resistant in six months. They pump more antibiotics into chickens than they do feed. No wonder we're all getting sick. The age of your cheap chicken is around 35 days yet look at the size of it. Imagine your toddler being 25 stone and you're looking at roughly the rate of forced growth that's going on. On the up side, David, because I know you appreciate your cheap chicken, they do cut the sores and scabs off before they put the bird in the shrink-wrapped packet. Which is why it's probably best if you don't examine the carcase too closely. The sores and scabs are caused by sitting in ammonia all day, by the way, the ammonia coming from their own piss and shit. Mmmmm. Lunchtime seems so far away...
Last night BBC news showed the reality behind cheap chicken - birds staggering around and barely able to stand up. They are fattened up and killed within six weeks of hatching, and the conditions are appalling. Each morning the dead have to be removed and of course the shit is everywhere in the vast sheds.
It is animal cruelty for the sake of cheap and not particularly healthy food, and of course the farmers get little out of it. This is what I would call unsustainable.
Nothing winds me up AC1. hahahaha
Seriously though Aoiffe is right - why would anyone want to actually consume that. Yuck.
I've seen one or two of those documentaries too. I'll definitely try to buy more from my local butcher in future.
Plenty of decent farmers out there that take great care and pride in the upkeep of there animals, its only the actions of a small few due to market pressures that bring the rest into disrepute.