Butchers are not cruel to turkeys (From Stroud News and Journal)

Butchers are not cruel to turkeys

MILLIONS of people across Britain will tuck into a turkey dinner this week.

But not many will realise the bird taking pride of place on the dining table is likely to have been kept in a cramped, dark conditions with its beak cut off so it could not peck its shed-mates.

It sounds like a story of animal abuse from an RSPCA advertising campaign, but this treatment is actually standard practice for most British poultry.

Recently some shoppers in the Stroud area have started to rebel against this type of farming and have sought out more humane meat producers.

And one place they turn to is the family-run Taylors Butchers in Minchinhampton. The butchers, run by brothers Hugh, Mark and Stephen, was bought by their great grandfather in 1920.

It sells free range, organic meats from local sources like a Warminster farm with its own slaughterhouse which reduces the stresses involved in transporting live animals.

People come from all over the county to buy produce that has not travelled hundreds of miles before it hits the shelves and it has also had a much better quality of life than its battery farmed relations.

Many customers are elderly, perhaps trying to relive days when sausages were not pre-packed in polystyrene and sold on supermarket shelves.

The Taylors shop itself is a typically old-fashioned building. A butchers since 1711, it is hard to believe the place has changed much since.

It sits near a narrow crossroads at the centre of Minchinhampton - a town that seems set in a lovely, nostalgic time warp for visitors, especially at Christmas.

Real fir trees with tiny lights are suspended high on the ancient-looking Cotswold stone buildings, making the streets look even more like scenes from a festive picture postcard. Inside Taylors, the walls are decorated with cards from regulars.

Mark said: "We're on first name terms with a lot of our customers. "It's a friendly business.

"People like to know where their meat comes from." Mark, who lives on Windmill Road, Minchinhampton, has worked at the firm since he left school in 1980. Even though he works full-time with his brothers, they all live separately and never argue.

He said: "We love working together. "We even used to come to help out when we were kids.

"We run it as a democracy." Business has been steadily growing since the BSE and Foot and Mouth crises and the closure of nearby David Boyd butchers in April.

The Taylors make their own sausages, using ingredients like venison and they keep the mixture preservative-free.

Taylors sell around 300 turkeys a year and Mark said: "Our turkeys are all free range. And he added: "It's inhuman to cut their beaks off."

Free range turkeys are allowed to live longer than those which are intensively farmed. They are also fed less antibiotics, allowed outside for at least four hours a day and their meat is hung for longer to develop a better taste.

Taylors is even visited by vegetarians who, Mark said, have to buy meat for their families and would prefer to buy it there than in the supermarket.

Turkey, Mark thinks, will always be the most popular meal at Christmas - but there are other ways of producing the succulent meat without causing distress to the ten million birds we eat each December.