Evening I have seen quite a lot of ready meals from all of the supermarkets, which include chicken, for instance chicken supreme, in every instance the chicken comes from Thailand , except chicken from marks and Spencer which is British chicken.
How can chicken be cheaper import ?? they have to pay the farmers, and pay the cost of trail from Asia to the UK.. surely it would make sense to have British chicken and cheaper. can anyone explain thanks..

Thailand has no animal welfare laws and a shit econcomy. It genuinely is cheaper to have chicken imported from the third world than it is to grow some here.

You know we don't actually "grow" chicken??

How do you know it comes from Thailand?

normally says on the packaging.

As somebody already mentioned I doubt there are animal welfare laws in Asia and labour and land are much cheaper. Plus they will be injected with water to bulk up the meat.

yes it does state on the packets.. and British chicken is pumped with water as well.

sometimes, fresh chicken (not frozen) produced in the UK should generally not be water injected.

Sometimes it should generally not be water injected?

What does that mean?

I rarely buy ready meals but if I do it's only ever from M&S, Waitrose or Morrisons which all source from the UK.

I think they missed a full stop between 'sometimes' and the rest of it.

I had put a comma between sometimes and the rest of the sentence. Never mind, made sense to me.

Deli counters use Thai chicken for sandwiches, and pizza places use it too. I'd rather gnaw my own arm off.

Its common practise for frozen chicken to contain injected water no matter where its place of origin. Your local butcher selling fresh chickens is the least likely (there will always be some water content even in `fresh birds`

In Morrisons it's the 'extra tasty' chickens that have water pumped into them. I go for the ordinary chickens as they don't.

Is it just water or is it flavourings or brine?

I bought a fresh large chicken from Morrisons and after I hd cooked it and went to make sandwiches I found the meat quite wet and soggy, I thought that it had probably been injected with water, I have never had that problem with their medium chickens. It really puts you off buying from them again.

read the label, if it is water injected then it has to be stated on the ingredients.

I bought a ready meal of chicken goujons and a dip from Morrisons & was rather surprised to see it stated on the back of the pack that the chicken came from Thailand-this was about 6 months ago so they may have changed it now I suppose.