SLOP BUCKETS

I have a similar approach FlicketyB. I only buy organic, free range chicken, or lamb from our local moors/butcher. I never buy farmed fish. I don't' cook a lot with meat, so it isn't too expensive. As you say, good quality goes much further, and tastes so much better as well.

Iam64 I only eat organic meat. It is superficially more expensive but because the quality and flavour is so good it doesn't shrivel up in the cooking so, for us a pound of meat will be more than sufficient for 6 people and with bacon we have replaced 2 supermarket rashers that boil dry and shrivel up before they respond to frying or grilling, with one dry cured organic rasher that stays the same size. For chicken I use boned thighs rather than chicken breasts. They taste delicious, and again one thigh replaces one superficially much larger supermarket chicken breats.

I have never had any problem with food waste, not maggots or smells. I have had a caddy beside the sink for years into which I put vegetable waste and trimmings, and odd bits of paper and card and take up to the compost heap every day or so. We generate very little animal or cooked food waste. I have a little pot. like a plant saucer on the draining board, which currently contains 2 bacon rinds and the skin of a smoked mackerel fillet. They have been there two days and because open to the air have dried out, so do not smell and do not seem to attract flies. They will be put in a bag and put out in the specialist container on Tuesday.

It's meat that's the problem so far as I understand it, and the ban on feeding human food to animals, is to prevent the development of things like cjd/mad cow disease.

I wish we could return to less intensive, factory farming and avoid meat/fish that has been reared in these conditions. It's hideous to treat fellow creatures so badly. I read recently that an adult farmed salmon eats its own body weight in anti biotics before it's killed for eating. Magnify that to include chickens, cows and pigs, goodness knows how much antibiotic is being transferred to humans from the flesh of creatures.

Yes, it was a food and mouth epidemic which started with a pig farmer in Scotland as far as I can remember Tricia. But I think he was importing food from abroad anyway.

re: giving food waste to chickens, pigs etc - I believe this has been banned now in UK since one of the epidemics (can't remember which one.)
But maybe this just applies to large farms where the animals are sold for human consumption.

The sherry may have helped - but the main difference was that pigs lives, well like pigs. Ours had plenty of room to snuffle and wander through the trees, and shared pig runs, where they were not overcrowded.

Pigs just aren't meant to live their lives unable to moved, unable to develop muscle, or mix with their piggy pals. I appreciate that farmers have to make a living, and work very hard but I dislike intensive factory farming - a lot.

Must have been the sherry in the trifles!

Well, bacon and pork certainly tasted better in those days!

My DM worked at a very posh hotel when I was younger; she was horrified to see trifles and other lovely puds as well as other good food going into the pig swill simply because they had not been eaten by guests, not that they were off.

She used to say that the local pigs were the best fed in the country.

When I was in my early teens, I helped out on a pig farm Ana. We lived in a sea side town, and we'd collect the left over food from all the B&B's, slop it into bins, horse driven cart, and make our way back to the pig farm. Pigs loved the food, friendly creatures, except one, so grumpy she lived in isolation. On reflection maybe that added to her grumpy demeanour. It's a pity it's no longer safe to feed slops to pigs, it's a pity pigs no longer live outside, with shelters, as ours did. Still, that's progress init.

We scraped our leftovers from dinner into a 'pig bin' at school.

Slop bucket is not a nice term, Joan is right, that is what it always meant.

Ours is a 'food waste bin' or 'food recycling bin' to give it its official title.

We have a badger family. They and their young recycle all food waste. They have a sweet tooth and eat fallen plums, apples and blackberries .

We have 4 large wheelie bins. Today's collection is for garden and food waste, paper and glass. Next week, it's waste that isn't recyclable. The council provides biodegradable bags for food waste. The bags fit our under the sink compost bin, and then go straight into the green wheelie bin. Since reading about the fat balls forming in the sewers, I no longer pour anything in that category down the sink. When the green food waste bins were introduced, there was a bit of an outcry locally, concerns we'd be over run with rats. That hasn't happened. I do hope the food waste is used for compost at some central point.

The only slop bucket I have ever used was very hard on the backs of the legs. And you had to be very careful to balance properly so as to not tip it over. And put the newspaper cover back afterwards.

Ah, GN can bring back the best of memories.

Slop bucket used to mean something quite different, in the days of outside loos and jerries under the bed! And those earlier prisons where the cells had no lavs, used to 'slop out' on a morning. It makes your nose hurt to think about it.

As for food waste, we have chickens, a dog and a compost bin, so the only things that go in the council bin are well wrapped bones.

Marelli sorry to disagree but our Council tells us that Clackmannanshire has the highest recycling rate in the whole of Britain. We are also told that the 'Wee Coonty' was the first to extend recycling from the glass collection bins which we have had for yonks for the big Glass Works in Alloa, to first paper, then plastic, tins, clothing and garden waste. I know that the garden waste is shredded, left to weather and available free to all local residents for garden compost (bring your own bags). Not sure what they do with kitchen waste - perhaps fuel for the incinerator which powers crushers, etc. at the spotlessly clean and tidy recycling centre.

Our council don't provide the liners either Galen and they're not cheap.

Sounds a bit like the pig bins we had after the war - I can remember the smell

Like you Tricia between the dogs and the chickens and the compost heap we have no leftovers to put in a slop bin.

I've been avoiding this thread because I thought it was about the type of 'slop bucket' so neatly described by Nonu above

Neither does mine. And they even check how many newspapers have been used [one sheet only allowed, I believe]. And those compostable bags aren't cheap.

Our council don't provide the liners

When I hear the term SLOP BUCKET, I think of those pails that used to be taken round the bedrooms years[so I have heard] to empty the CHAMBER POTS into.

I vaguely remember my Gran having a slop bucket, but don't know what she put in it.
My Mum used to put any wettish food waste down the toilet, and I do that too.
Our chickens, dogs, cats get more solid food waste, but there isn't much of it. Veg peelings etc go on the compost heap.
As we have to transport our own rubbish to different places (in rural France) we try to have as little of it as possible.

Every now and again I think of all the jobs I now do that used to previously be done by other people: sorting the recycling, supermarket check-out, travel agent (trains and boats and planes), hotel reviewer, weather "girl" reports, bank clerk ... the list is endless I'm a one woman wizard of everything. No wonder I sometimes think "Well, I ain't doing that one no more".

Apologies bit "off piste" .