I don't know off any people now who process the traditional way commercially!
It's just not economically viable. If you search the internet before Christmas when people are advertising chickens and turkeys for the festive season. Almost all of them are commercially processed. When I was looking for ideas of what to charge for ours, I found one website that was selling chickens oven ready weighing only 2 - 2.9kgs for £28 plus £25 P&P! JUST FOR ONE CHICKEN! Just imagine what they'd charge for a hand reared traditionally processed chicken!
When we lived in Essex, Brian had a friend called Don who had one of the last hand killed, hand plucked and gutted turkey farms in England. Brian used to help with the plucking sometimes. His turkeys were expensive, even though they were all grown indoors. they never saw daylight!
And as to the polyphosphates Spana, yes, they are injected into the birds I think to either stop the water that is also injected into them from ooozing out or its a preservative. I'm not sure, but people are amazed when we tell them that a commercially reared and processed chicken is not just chicken!
Which is why I like people to have a taste of ours to see the difference! We gave a chicken to a nice lady today who told me she doesn't like the leg meat. But she has promised to try one of our legs!!!!
Mind you, around here they'd rather pass our house to get to Tesco and buy their cheap stuff rather than pull into our drive and pay £3 a kg!
I don't care, any leftover and Brian and I and our family and friends eat them!!!
and this is not an advert, but commercially raised meat is something that I am passionate about! I passionately hate the way people are continually duped by the supermarkets who try to tell us "We are here for you the customer!" Bull poops, they are here for their shareholders!