Irish chicken is fresher and better quality - please buy Irish

Johro

Robdude wrote: »

'Better quality' is awfully subjective. I'd rather have cheap chicken than no chicken....and I've stopped buying chicken completely because it's so expensive.

I guess.. Still, I'm not just talking about chicken, and it doesn't take too much effort to check labels as for ingredients, additives, origin etc.
I buy mostly Irish products where I can, and meat either from a local butcher or from our local super valu whose meat products come from Sleeda Farm, which is local to me.
Better quality to me is fresh food that isn't full of added crap, if you can buy twenty value burgers for 1.89 or four steak burgers for 3.00 it doesn't take a genius to work out which are better quality. Ya might go for the value if ya got a family to feed, sure, if it was me I'd rather go down the middle and at least make sure my kids don't eat cheap reconstituted shite. Maybe get the better brand ones rather than the cheapo version. (Or not get the burgers at all )
Better quality is not that subjective.

Johro

saywhatyousee wrote: »

You can get a small Chicken in Tesco for 3 euro how the heck is that expensive?

+1
You can get a roasted stuffed chicken for a fiver. Or four quid, depending on where you shop.

old hippy

sparksfly wrote: »

Imports have no economic benefit and kill native jobs.

But people should continue to buy Irish exports, yeah? :rolleyes:

DominoDub

meat processors have been deliberately pumping chicken full of water - and even beef protein - in an effort to make them look bigger, with some Dutch sourced chicken fillets containing as much as 50% added water.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3047159.stm

Johro

'The chicken you are eating could have been injected with beef or pork protein. That is the claim that will be made by BBC One's Panorama programme on Thursday after a six month investigation into the chicken processing industry in Holland.
Tests carried out for the programme reveal that beef or pork DNA has been found in chicken, including products which are being sold as Halal meat.
It will also reveal that meat processors have been deliberately pumping chicken full of water - and even beef protein - in an effort to make them look bigger, with some Dutch sourced chicken fillets containing as much as 50% added water.
Additives
The practice of injecting chicken with water and proteins is not illegal, as long as it is accurately labelled.
It is also not illegal to inject beef and pork proteins into chicken, as long as they are labelled as "hydrolised proteins".
These proteins are added to the chicken to allow the meat to retain more water.
All of the companies featured in the film deny using beef or pork protein in this process, with some denying they use additives, and the rest insisting they use hydrolised protein made from chickens.
However, one German protein company has been caught on film boasting about how it has developed a method of breaking down the DNA in the proteins so that no traces of beef or pork can be found.' (BBC Panorama)



Even more reason to buy Irish, and if possible locally sourced chicken. The main problem though is that the food industry is not regulated properly and this is why they can get away with selling us crap as food.

Leftist

Buy irish

I've worked in cold storage in ireland in the past, for years infact.

Legally you can declare food originating where ever it has been treated or packaged.

Most of the chicken you think is Irish, is not Irish. Ask anyone involved in the trade.

Comes from the same place as the beef. South America.

How's that for your national pride. Wonder what Padraig Pearse would have to say.

Johro

Leftist wrote: »

Buy irish

I've worked in cold storage in ireland in the past, for years infact.

Legally you can declare food originating where ever it has been treated or packaged.

Most of the chicken you think is Irish, is not Irish. Ask anyone involved in the trade.

Comes from the same place as the beef. South America.

How's that for your national pride. Wonder what Padraig Pearse would have to say.

It's not a matter of national pride. It's a health matter.
I have to agree with the rest of that though. It seems the best chance of getting better/fresher chicken is to look for a Bord Bia quality assured mark.
There's an Irish Times article on it that makes pretty disturbing reading, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0329/1224293291679.html, which includes this:
'In recent months, high levels of imports coupled with the rising cost of animal feed have increased pressure on Irish chicken farmers, who get as little as 58 cent for each chicken they farm.
Cavan farmer Alo Mohan feels that while the supermarkets slash prices on chicken to bring consumers in the door, it’s leaving farmers hanging on a knife edge. “The problem is that the price of animal feed has risen and many chicken farmers are now working at a loss,” he says. The Irish Farmers’ Association estimates that poultry farmers get less than 10 per cent of the retail value of a whole chicken, the processor gets 35-40 per cent and the retailer typically comes away with more than 50 per cent of the retail price.
It’s this slim margin for farmers that is having an effect on the immediate future of Irish poultry and the 2,500 jobs in the sector here. “I have farmers I’ve helped arrange credit for as they are under severe pressure, and when they hear the figures that supermarkets are taking out of this country, it sticks in the back of their throat. They are milking us out of it,” says Mohan.
David Owens from Bord Bia says: “There is pressure definitely at the moment; chicken is the most discounted of all meats. Supermarkets use it as a promotional tool and a loss leader to sell other goods. Unlike other meats, chicken has risen in volume of sales but at the same time, it’s falling in price.”
In the past 10 years, three chicken processors in the Republic have closed, and for the farmers that raise birds for the remaining five plants, it’s a difficult time.
Two years ago, Cappoquin Poultry in Waterford survived closure after new investors stepped in.'


So that's why it's harder to find Irish chicken in supermarkets. It's worth reading the rest of that article by the way, pretty scandalous stuff going on out there. People have to demand good food though before that'll change.

Johro

'Some, such as Superquinn and the Supervalu group, source almost all their chicken from the Republic of Ireland. In the case of Tesco, almost 70 per cent of its chicken is from Northern Irish plants owned by the giant Brazilian meatpacker Marfrig, which recently bought the Moy Park and O’Kane poultry brands.
“We met with Tesco to try and get them to sell more chicken from [the Republic] – if they bought all their chicken from the Republic it would mean 1,000 or more jobs but they said they don’t distinguish between the Republic and the North,” says Alo Mohan.'


Now there's something worth knowing. I've always made a point of shopping at places like Supervalu anyway, it seems justified now. We don't have a Superquinn round here, or I'd shop there too. I avoid Tesco.

sparksfly

old hippy wrote: »

But people should continue to buy Irish exports, yeah? :rolleyes:[/QUOTE

Im not saying that we can avoid imports.
The point I was making is that jobs provided by (food) import companies does not make up for the jobs lost to irish suppliers, it just might be a thought when deciding what to buy.

Ireland imports almost half of its food, the highest percentage of any agri based european country.
Holland, with 25% of our arable land area and 4 times our population exported 49.7 billion euros worth of agri products last year.
Ireland exported 7.4 billion.

I woudl'nt worry unduly about the importance of our agri exports. By european standards, they are pathetic.

Lord Derpington

sparksfly wrote: »

Ireland imports almost half of its food, the highest percentage of any agri based european country.
Holland, with 25% of our arable land area and 4 times our population exported 49.7 billion euros worth of agri products last year.
Ireland exported 7.4 billion.

Did you ever hear this well used phrase;

"If the Dutch had Ireland they would feed the world, if the Irish had Holland they'd drown." URL="http://goo.gl/MZPmv"]1[/URL

Think it kind of sums up pretty well what some people clearly think about Ireland, its agriculture sector and competency.

eleven1

i had eat plenty of chicken from different places in my life, Irish chicken is one of my favourites , specially when it properly barbecued yummmyyyyyyyy

ShadowHearth

I am a chef and all meat we buy is from local suppliers. Prices are good when you have deals with suppliers. In my current workplace we grow our own pigs, ducks, chickens and turkeys. ( free range stuff )

i work in few restaurants and hotels in ireland and all of them were using only irish stuff. ( well one place was a wee bit different)

we were getting beef and lamb cheaper from one supplier, untill we found out that it was brazilian stuff with irish labels glued on them. we knew it was something dodgy about that meet, but we did not had any prove. ****ing idiots even forgot to take off old labels when glueing New ones. Needless to say that was the last time we used that supplier.

90% sounds unrealistic. unless there are factories, which process chicken and they dont give a **** what is the origin and quality of meat as it will be frozen or minced to chicken burgers etc.

restaurants and chipers ( i newer worked in one, but from what i have seen, most local chipers using same suppliers as we do) are using alot of local stuff.

you can sell once ****y quality chicken and make bigger profit on one person, but he will newer come back. You make good quality dish with high quality chicken and you will get the same client more then once and he will bring his friends/family.