Are you concerned about where your chicken/meat comes from?

I am concerned about how all life is being treated. Corporate profits dictate the highest returns for their investments and farm animals are treated like profit factories instead of living things. Chickens are routinely fed anti-biotics because it has been discovered to make them weigh more. Meat cattle are forcibly fed in order to get more nutrients into them and make them fat in a short period of time. This is deplorable.

As a farmer and ex-dairy farmer I spent 20 years looking after dairy cows and calves. The reason that people do this is because they love cows and want to spend what is essentially a hard, dirty life being around them and working with them. You get a lot of joy and happiness doing this but equally, you also know that your animals are going to be slaughtered so people can eat them. Arguments against human exploitation of animals are essentially designed to appeal on emotional levels rather than on any scientific reason why this should not be carried on. Farmers in the Western world have to adhere to severe welfare regulations, and even if this weren't the case, well-fed, happy animals are essential for financial survival. There is a disconnect between consumer and producer in the West today, and this is being exploited for political means by a section of the environmentalist movement that occupies itself with "animal rights". This comes from a core environmentalist belief that the environment exists for the greater good of animals and plants with the EXCLUSION of Man. This is demonstrably false, as such values can only be assigned by Man in the first place. Manipulative arguments attempt to demonstrate that Man is the only animal to manage his environment for his own good, and that this is somehow immoral and wrong. Well, we don't have fangs or claws, so how else are we to survive? Instead of succumbing to emotional arguments and shrill, cherry-picked data, drawing attention to human error and poor decision making, we should be concentrating on the reality that it is correct to exploit animals for food, and devise systems where this can be carried out in the most humane way possible. But there will always be errors. If there weren't then there would be no road accidents for example.

It's one of the reasons I've cut my meat consumption to almost nothing. Yes, I will and do pay more for free range.

Yes, I am concerned about how meat and dairy animals are kept when they are still alive. It breaks my heart to learn that they are kept in cages their entire lives, sometimes.