I have never been supportive of the idea of vegetarianism as a response to concerns about farm animal welfare – by reducing the market one is not necessarily improving the existence of those animals still in the system. However with a growing world population and demand for meat going-up faster vegetarianism would put some brake on the pressure to rear farm animals simply as economic units.
One way to hopefully improve things is to be a responsible consumer. As regards this local area for example ‘Mick and Mark’ sell a wide range of sausages using free-range pork reared by ‘Anna’s happy trotters’, M. and M. mostly sell from a van at markets and farmer’s markets but also retail from behind the old Tasty Foods building on High Street, Barton.
Tesco sell ‘outdoor reared’ pork meat which I assume means what it states. Co-op now advertise that all their meat retailed is from British suppliers, but, of course, this means mostly factory farmed meat (Co-op use to pioneer free-range meat sales!). Waitrose retails quite a lot of free-range meat as does Sainsbury’s, although here some stores stock less than others which is frustrating for discerning customers.
At Mr. Harrison’s restaurant ‘The Old Tile Works’, Barton the initial intention was to use free-range meat from his farm – I am not sure if this is still the case.
‘Pink pig’ farm near Scunthorpe is, I think, an entirely free-range meat outlet.
The remaining butchers in Barton don’t seem to bother with free-range meat whereas Fields butchers in Anlaby retail quite a lot of free-range meat along with non-free-range. I don’t think butchers in Hull and Hessle make much effort on the free-range front but some might that I am not aware of.
Above picture taken from Anna’s Happy Trotters leaflet. A large field of housing for free-range pork production can be seen beside the A134 between Stradsett and Wereham, south-west Norfolk. The produce goes to Sainsbury’s.