Loved this - reply to bbc website question - will you still eat turkey?

I will eat poultry. It's the least of my worries considering
that terrorists want to kill me, people are trying to steal my
identity, my pension will be worthless in the future, I have fat growing
round my internal organs, I don't eat enough omega three, I don't have
all my debts consolidated in one place and what I think are great lines
she thinks are premature wrinkles. Then of course, just when I
forget about SARS, Devil Dogs and MRSA I will of course contract SARS
be savaged by a vicious Fido on my way to hospital, only to lose my
leg to a mystery bug in the operating theatre. Yeah, I think I'll
stick with Turkey Drummers.
Chris Curran

What about you?

He's got a point.

That's funny!

But why would people not still eat turkey?

There was a programme about it, I never saw it though.

He sure does have a point.

I thought it was because of the bird flu at the Bernard Matthews factory a few weeks ago - most of the major supermarket chains have reported a drop in sales (25%, I think it was) of processed turkey products...allegedly because people think they can catch bird flu from eating infected turkey.

Bizarrely when I tried to buy some turkey myself this week, there wasn't any in my local Sainsbury's, so either the people round here are buying it in preference to anything else , or the supermarkets aren't ordering as much as usual, which makes you wonder how accurately their sales figures represent the public's real reaction...

Ah right .

I don't really like eating processed meat anyway. It looks funny, and i've heard stories about what goes in it

yes that could be why... but there was something on the television

Yes, did you see the Jamie Oliver programme about what goes into chicken nuggets?? Gross.

I will hasten to add that I was trying to buy some unprocessed turkey escalopes, to make Thai turkey skewers (yum yum ), and there wasn't any turkey to be had at all in the fresh meat section, so out of interest I looked in the frozen section too, and that was also bare, both processed and unprocessed.

(Did them with chicken instead, but somehow it wasn't the same...)

Which is rubbish of course - it's because we all saw those poor birds crammed into factories and learnt that semi-processed 'meat' is transported half way across the world before it ends on up your plate -yuk
Turning beautiful birds into muck should be illegal.

Goldfinch
(A Bird of the Feather Member)

p.s. I do eat poutry but only ones that have been allowed to have pedicures on demand and have been given a good all round education.

i didnt see it and dont think i want to

i did see a programme about something like that once and it definitely put me off processed meat!

Yes i did ... it made me feel physically sick!
I like my meat to be pure!!

Me too , although being cooked in a little alcohol is OK too - we had boeuf bouguinonne (sp??) on Sunday.

Sorry Soph, will stop hijacking your thread now

No worries

Haha .. yes .. sorry soph!

No worries

I don't buy Turkey anyway because my wife dosn't like it.

The turkey I buy for Christmas comes from a local free-range farm. I don't actually like the Bernard Matthews Turkey Products. I'm much more likely to spend a little extra and buy ethically farmed meat - ideally locally sourced, so our local butcher, the local farm-shop and farmers market tend to be the places I buy most of my meat.

I'd rather eat road-kill pheasant that I've prepared myself than battery farmed chicken.

I've never bought Bernard M products either - and am unlikely to start now.

I could never bring myself to kill an animal of any type, (although I hope I could if I came across one suffering terribly) so don't eat meat.

I don't see how I could justify paying Bernand Matthews, Tescos, Waitrose et al, to do something for me that I wouldn't do myself.

Jod's comment about the road-kill pheasant I entirely agree with, even if I am a vegetarian. The husband of a friend of mine accidently killed a deer in the middle of the night in a collision. He went home, got his trailer, took the deer home, and they had a winter's supply of venison in the freezer by morning. Far more 'honest' in my view than something on a polystyrene tray from the supermarket. . .

Sales of Turkey are down up to 60% in our area as we live only about 10-15 miles away from the infected site. A lot of people also don't buy his products because of the unethical way that he got his business going, that I think is well known across the country; or at least it should be.

But that does put things into perspective; but when you consider that I only live a few miles from that site, I will still remain cautious.

that's why you're not the prime minister

So true!

The best reason for avoiding turkey is that it doesn't taste very nice...

I think it depends on the situation. If it were the turkey of someone who was pointing a gun at your head threatening to shoot you if you ate it and it was also infected with anthrax, I think there would probably be better reasons not to eat it.

That't true, Superpyroman, but I don't want to be prime minister. . .

that's another good reason why you aren't then