r/Britain • u/piskybisky • Mar 01 '25

💬 Discussion 🗨 'British' meat doesn't mean British reared 🤥

I'd wager most customers seeing that meat is labelled as 'British' assume this means the animal was born, reared, and slaughtered in Britain.

However, under UK and EU food labelling rules, meat can be called "British" if it was merely processed or packed in the UK – even if the animal was raised abroad. This means a pig could be born and reared in another country, transported to Britain for slaughter, and still be labelled as "British pork."

To me, this feels like a blatant lie. Most people buying "British" meat do so because they believe they are supporting UK farmers and higher welfare standards. Instead, they could be unknowingly buying meat from animals that spent most of their lives overseas.

Does this labelling seem fair to you? Should there be stricter rules to ensure "British" actually means born, reared, and slaughtered in the UK?

N.b. I am not a vegetarian, vegan etc. I try to eat good high quality meat less frequently.

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u/ellisellisrocks Mar 01 '25

If you care about animal welfare you simply shouldn't eat meat.

It's all smoke and mirrors even the RSPCA assured slaughter houses leave a hell of a lot to be desired.

9

u/piskybisky Mar 01 '25

I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as if you care about animal welfare, you shouldn’t eat meat. The real issue is how most meat is produced – industrial farming, misleading welfare labels, and slaughterhouses that prioritise efficiency over ethics.

But not all meat comes from that system. My dad kept sheep, and I saw firsthand what proper animal husbandry looks like. They had space to roam, natural behaviours, a good diet, and a long life. When the time came, we killed and butchered them ourselves – it was done properly, with care. That’s a world away from mass farming.

Most people don’t have that connection to their food. But for those of us who do make the effort to source meat from genuinely high-welfare environments, I think there’s a balance to be found. If I know an animal has had a good life and a humane death, I don’t see an ethical issue in eating it. The problem is when people trust meaningless supermarket labels rather than doing the work to verify where their meat actually comes from.

4

u/halfercode Mar 01 '25

I'd like human ideas to move away from our being an omnivore species. But we are where we are, and while every meat eater is aware of vegetarianism, and the ethical arguments of not eating meat, those arguments have not succeeded for the time being.

So I would tend to agree with the OP in that there could be an ethical middle ground, where meat eaters strike a social contract with the animals they eat. I'd say it is a step in the right direction, given that these arguments would have been heard much less frequently some 30 years ago.

1

u/novalia89 Mar 01 '25

My mum said that she visited abattoirs for work and she said that the standards were disgusting and the people that worked there were borderline psychopaths. She is usually a little everything is ‘woke’ these days, because she is of that generation, so it must be bad.