I don't want to eat American meat

If we are going to eat meat then the welfare of the animals is paramount. Too much cheap food, too much cruelty, too many don’t care.

I am so happy tgat a few vegetarians and vegans have spoken up. I became vegetarian 41 years ago and plant based nearly 2 years ago. I do wonder about those who say as long as animals are well cared for it is ok to eat them. I am wondering where killing cones into 'well cared for'....

All animals go through cruelty to reach the plate Chris. The transport and process waiting at abattoirs. Also, you can’t assume you know what you’re getting because it’s British - remember the horse meat scandal a few years ago? The best way to avoid eating meat that you would prefer to avoid, is to give-up eating meat. It’s better for your bowel and it’s better for the environment. People either find they don’t miss it at all, or don’t miss it as much as they think they will!

All meat has country of origin on packaging. All in you need to do is look at the packaging. I am in favour of the UK doing a trade deal with USA. If chlorinated chicken comes I don't care. No difference to eating that to eating Spanish salad leaves washed in chlorine. No one will be forcing it down your throat. Having more choice will be good for prices. Just because you don't want to ear it should not mean others cannot choose it if they wish.

I only eat free-range eggs but I would not want to prevent others from choosing to eat eggs from battery hens. Some may not be able to afford free-range.

At least you are in the minority.

Halal methods of killing animals is the worst. Yet children at school are given no option as it is all schools buy to accommodate Muslim children.

I live in the US. I never buy meat from this country. a disgrace.

Kosher methods aren't good either newnanny. At least most Halal in the UK is stunned before the throat slitting. Kosher isn't.

I only buy from local butchers who know the farms where the beasts come from - and interestingly local mums who can't afford much do too. They're very competitive with Tesco prices and the meat is better and often more filling and so goes further.

It's not just meat from the USA which is badly raised. We already import from all around the world from countries with poor husbandry which are approved by the EU trade agreements.

The point about using chlorine to was chicken is that it masks bad practices in animal welfare which is why I don't want it. Salad isn't a sentient being .

As others have said I'm very glad that I have no decision to make on eating meat as I am a vegan. I would challenge the idea that UK farms are generally high welfare; mostly they are merely highER welfare when compared with other countries' standards. I think the government/meat industry have been very successful in convincing us that the UK has superb welfare standards. There have been several high profile investigations of UK farms, some of which had been marketed as high welfare and which supplied UK supermarkets (I can provide links if anyone would like to check). The low price of pork plus the fact that there are very few pigs visible in fields is because they are living indoors in factory farms! Lamb is expensive because sheep are far harder to raise intensively! The regulations have phrases like 'as far as is possible' which leave a lot of loopholes e.g. on it being illegal to cause suffering, there is an exception if the suffering was necessary! Once I started to dig, I found that the definition of 'free-range' is very far from what I had imagined; that the RSPCA and Red Tractor symbols were no assurance of high welfare.

There are quite a large number of breeding pigs outdoors if you look for them, however very few are fattened outdoors. If they are sold as organic they will be fattened in straw yards, most of the rest will be intensive indoor units.

“Lamb is more expensive” You cannot raise Lamb intensively there are far too many problems, the only time sheep are housed is at lambing time which makes looking after them much easier. Just like Beef, Lamb is expensive because they are ruminants and convert food less efficiently - although they can digest forage which pigs cannot.

There are plenty of highly publicized allegations if poor welfare but few prosecutions, you see far more publicized cases of domestic pets being subject to cruelty. Farms may not be perfect, but they are better than many pet owners.

I once picked up a pack of pork chops when shopping in Asda.
When I looked at the label, it said ‘Slaughtered in Germany ‘.
I put them straight back. It put me right of them.
M and S chops are much nicer and british reared.

I’ve been trying to cook vegetarian but it’s not going well! I need a lot more practice....So much easier to make a dish tasty with meat. Sigh.

The Agricultural Bill has passed its third reading, meaning that food manufactured to lower standards than British ones can be imported. All to facilitate the US trade deal, of course.

All the Conservatives voted for it, except one. The DUP did too. Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP all voted against it. There was an amendment to keep out stuff like chlorinated chicken, but it didn't get through. Some Tories voted for the amendment but not enough. Rishi Sunak was one but he said he voted the wrong way, because he didn't understand the technology. Hmm... Another one with a backbone of steel.

The UK farmers begged for the bill to be rejected but the Tories didn't listen, even those with big rural constituencies. Beats me why they got the rural vote, given that this bill was always on the cards.

Whose for chlorinated chicken pie and hormone-filled beef burgers? Yummy.

In respect of chlorinated chicken, I understand the chlorinated bit isn't really too much to worry about as the chlorine mix used is apparently swimming pool strength. But, the reason for its use is. The chickens are so poorly treated that the carcasses have to be cleaned in this way - even though it doesn't work and I read that around 25% of people will suffer from salmonella poisoning in any one year. Perhaps one of our US grans can confirm if this is true?

Chris,
Here in the US, we buy from trusted sources and the meat is very good, not just in taste, but in quality. The US Food and Drug Administration also grades the meat according to quality standards (that set price) and similarly regulates cattle, dairy and poultry farmers. Most antibiotics and hormones have been banned. Organic farmers must adhere to even higher standards.

I get that you want to protect your own farmers.....Americans prefer to buy American too. The problem is when demand exceeds supply, or when there is some other economic quagmire to contend with. Bottom line is that people have to eat. So, things may be far from perfect these days, but there are far worse places in the world to procure your beef than from the US.

About antibiotics, yes they are used here but in nothing like the amounts used in countries like America.

I live in the States, and the only meat I buy is organically raised, grass fed, free range. It’s not all bad over here!

Thankfully I am vegetarian, but there are a few rather smug posters on here who seem to think that the answer is to buy locally from a reputable butcher; if only it was so simple and everyone could afford good quality traceable meat. But, as it looks as if one of the conditions of the US trade deal is that country of origin is not disclosed, general shopping in a supermarket, whether Waitrose or Farm foods will take the decision about whether to buy it or not away from the shopper. Apart from anything else, we should be appalled at the state of the rearing and processing methods which mean that the US meat has to be treated with chlorine and/or antibiotics.

willa45 Here is how the FDA explain hormone use in the US

Since the 1950s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a number of steroid hormone drugs for use in beef cattle and sheep, including natural estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and their synthetic versions. These drugs increase the animals’ growth rate and the efficiency by which they convert the feed they eat into meat.

The FDA approves these drugs only after information and/or studies have shown that the food from the treated animals is safe for people to eat, and that the drugs do not harm the treated animal or the environment. The drugs also have to be effective, meaning that they work as intended. The labeling for each product provides all instructions for safe and effective use and is approved by FDA. For each approved product, the FDA also makes available to the public via its website a Freedom of Information Summary that summarizes the information that FDA used to determine that the drug is safe for the treated animals, the animal products (edible tissues such as meat) are safe for humans to eat, and that the product is effective.

These hormones were banned in the U.K. over 30 yrs ago.
Traceability imposes a lot of cost on the producer, do we really want untraceable food.!

Good to read Artols. I saw a horrific programme on the conditions that pigs, cattle and chickens were reared in the US. At the end there was one farmer raising his beef organically and people came from miles away to buy his meat.

We too raise animals in terrible conditions. Like you I buy what little meat we eat from a locally supplied butcher.

Apparently, we import chicken from South America, via Portugal ,as being in the EU . There was a scandal about what they were fed on and the cost of rearing each one was, 1.2p?

We only eat free range chicken,pork beef,etc. So,I hope ,where we can ,that we support our farmers. I don't know what the 'chicken' is, in Chinese and Indian takeaways,it is like some sort of paste ,stuck together in approximate squares.Weird.
Imported food of any sort,needs to be researched,Vietnamese River Cobbler,then renamed Basa fillets is ghastly. If you google it,the top line says ,Don't eat this fish.

My friends in USA will never eat pork because of the antibiotics that are used in the rearing of pigs in their country. I always make sure that I only eat British meat, and will continue that way.we surely have no need to import any meat except lamb from New Zealand

We exported , in 2015, 95% of British lamb to EU. We still import some ? Why?

Not all swine raised in the US are given hormones/antibiotics- Those that haven't are marketed as such, and the information is on the packaging-