bees and pesticides on countryfile

[VEG]

So don't buy it,don't eat it....plenty of other good stuff to eat,seaweed,stinging nettles,dandelions,pigions,deer,rabbits..the list goes on and on,and catch,gather,prepare and cook all your own food. Plenty of snails around as well if they have not been contaminated by Bayer.

I dont eat crap food

 

[REDWOOD]

So don't buy it,don't eat it....plenty of other good stuff to eat,seaweed,stinging nettles,dandelions,pigions,deer,rabbits..the list goes on and on,and catch,gather,prepare and cook all your own food. Plenty of snails around as well if they have not been contaminated by Bayer.

I love seaweed, an essential part of a Welsh breakfast along with cockles or penny winkles, black pudding, fresh eggs, butchers pork and herb sausages, bacon, fresh mushrooms from the field behind me and thick bread toasted with slightly salted farmhouse butter

 

[Brosville]

49 days? - It's all part of a clever but frankly frightening "system" - growth promoters are banned, but often hefty doses of antibiotics have been given (it has the same effect, and keeps them alive in the atrocious conditions) - heat is kept up, it increases weight gain and makes them eat less - they're packed in to stop them exercising the fat off (fat is quick weight to put on), and they're fed on a "scientific" feed regime designed for fast weight gain - each year the breeders clip a day off egg to carcass time, or improve weight gain per kg of feed....

Aged parent used to run occupational therapy classes at the local mental hospital, where there were a steady stream of employees from a local vast "broiler" company - they'd at first be horrified, then they'd get hardened to the horror of it all (particularly the "killing lines"), then one day they'd flip out bigtime, and need loads of therapy, sometimes for years....

 

[Hivemaker.]

I love seaweed,

So do i...and the beach is only a couple hundred yards away and plenty of it growing there for free.

 

[Hivemaker.]

and they're fed on a "scientific" feed regime designed for fast weight gain - each year the breeders clip a day off egg to carcass time, or improve weight gain per kg of feed....

Saw some documentary a while ago where the fat balls also get injected with some sort of saline solution, by a series of needles,that way every one comes out at the set weight.

 

[Ely]

(and it's a fallacy that you need loads more time to do it properly, all you need is some skill!)

At home maybe. Believe me prep work is a lot of staff wages for a restaurant. And then you have constant electric for lighting on all day and night. Gas on the ovens all day and night, health and safety regs you have to spend money to meet, waste services to pay, min wage to meet, holiday pay, sick pay. Great Yarmouth mafia council rates to pay. Insurance this insurance that, tax this tax that. It just isn't like it was 100 years ago where you had a busy inn full of people eating fine ale and food. I'm glad to be out of it and training to be an electrician. But then they have their own set of red tape bollocks.

Every minute of staff peeling potatoes, carrots, cutting veg, mixing desserts, making sauces, in the morning before the inn/restaurant opens for lunch...it all costs a small fortune. And it needs many hands for a few hours a day.

 

[Brosville]

Sorry, don't agree at all - I know successful pubs that do it right, and profit from it! - as I said, the fairly recent TV series showed how they were getting Meals on Wheels back on track, they took the disillusioned staff who were preparing packet and frozen cr*p, and got them cooking real food again "from scratch"- inside a few weeks the "clients" were loving the food, the cooks were having pride in being cooks again, and they were doing it all on the same budget as the rubbish!

I think people get on a downward spiral - the Brakes rep comes in and flogs them the false idea that "instant chips, pizza and pies" is a route to extra profit, when all it says to the mug punter is "we don't care", so they go elsewhere!

 

[The Cumbrian]

each year the breeders clip a day off egg to carcass time,

Interesting. I know you have far more experience of this than I have but they were knocking birds out in 7 weeks when I had anything to do with poultry 30 years ago.

So by now they should be doing then in 19 days if they can knock a day a year off.

 

[The Cumbrian]

Sorry, don't agree at all - I know successful pubs

There are a lot of pubs round us that are producing good food from scratch and being successful at it.

 

[Brosville]

I wrote "each year the breeders clip a day off egg to carcass time, or improve weight gain per kg of feed...." - I too spent my time in the business over 20 years ago, and each year the reps would be round boasting of one or the other - I would suspect they are by now hitting natural limits of days to carcass....

 

[Ely]

Depends where you live I suppose. Our area. No chance

 

[Erichalfbee]

What are they feeding them on 49 days to plate !!!!!!!! not good

Genes as well.
I tried raising a few "broiler birds" free range with the rest of the hens and all they wanted to do was sit on their perches and eat. I would chase them round the field but they just got too fat to move around properly.
The next time I let a broody sit on eggs and ate the cockerels when they started crowing and very tasty they were too

We are lucky here in Cumbria there are many local producers and helped by the tourist trade there lots of quality good value food outlets.

 

[Brosville]

The poultry business has split into two distinct areas, broilers and layers, both completely different types of birds, both optimised for purpose. Some decades ago you had "dual-purpose" crosses, and a good example was the Rhode Island Red/Light Sussex cross - they were "sex-linked", so you could tell hens from cockerels from their colouration, and the hens would produce eggs, the cockerels would go for the table. They were less "feed efficient" than the newer single purpose birds, but produced excellent eggs and meat (Ideal for the present day back garden or small producer).

As for food pubs, I live in an area where loads of pubs are going to the wall (due I suspect more to do with drink-driving legislation, cheap supermarket booze and the smoking ban rather than not selling their food), but there are also many bucking the trend who share a common thread - good affordable fresh local food - thankfully those with a deep fat frier and a big freezer are losing out to them. My wife is a cook, and spent some years in one of the most successful local pub's kitchens - they're still doing really well on that simple "fresh" formula....

 

[mexbigshow]

wow, maybe i should have started this thread in off topic chat lol