How to source sustainable/ethical meat?

Question

There seem to be a lot of resources out there for sourcing sustainably/ethically grown vegetables, but many of the ones I can find seem to be aimed primarily at vegetarians/vegans, and so don't have meat products.

My wife and I want to live more sustainably and ethically, and so we'd like to make sure that all the food we buy fits with our beliefs - so we'd like to buy meat that was grown in an ethical manner (i.e. high animal welfare, humane slaughter, etc) and as sustainably as possible. We've already started growing our own veg, so our main focus at the moment is meat, non-food produce, and other harder-to-produce-ourselves staples such as rice and pasta.

Are there any resources or websites (ideally UK, but also general) for how to source such produce?

We currently buy the "organic" branded meat from our local supermarket, but they have a very limited range, it's often out of stock, and is almost all pre-packaged in plastic, which we'd also like to avoid for sustainability reasons.

Answer 1

Google is your friend, a cursory search for "ethical butcher UK" came up with some good results. You want a local butcher, who you can develop a relationship and trust with. There are some great books out there as well, on the question of buying meat. The vegetarians are right that eating lower on the foodchain can reduce your carbon footprint, but farming can be done with animals (grass fed) that puts more carbon into the soil, where it belongs.