Around Christmas there was a program "on't telly" about how turkeys are reared for Christmas. It was the usual stuff about the conditions they live in before they finally get killed etc. Anyway what really got my attention was the difference in quality between a farmed turkey and an organic / free range (you know what I mean) turkey. Essentially the organic one had better skin, flesh, stronger bones etc. Generally all round it looked a much nicer bird to stick in the oven. I'm sure the same can be said for how chickens are farmed and sold in supermarkets.

Moving on then, whilst in Tescos the other night I spotted the organic chickens next to the normal chickens. Just looking at them you could see a difference in the birds, but the biggest difference was the price. The price of an organic chicken was easily double that of a regular bird of the same weight, and that annoys me. Whilst we're being told that these chickens are a better quality meat, surely they don't justify that price? I discussed this at work and Chris made the good point that we're conditioned to some degree to supermarket prices of chickens now, so the price of an organic chicken is the price I really should be paying, but still the supermarket has got to be adding a bit of a markup here to make their organic profit?

So how can I get this better quality meat, without spending over the odds? Its a tough question, lobbying the supermarkets to change their attitudes to farming meat to shift the balance back to organic good quality meat (making it economic) isn't going to be easy. My only real option is to start shopping in proper butchers, and pop along to some local farmers markets, but where are these markets held and when? Well luckily for me I can use the interweb thingy, and look, http://www.farmersmarkets.net/ a website telling me what I want to know! So some weekend in the future I shall be dragging Dawn to a farmers market, and then we shall feast on food that shall surpass all supermarket produce. Hurrah! (If you have any other tips for getting good quality produce at normal prices let me know.)

Oh, and supermarkets, in the mean time, sort it out.