We buy most of our meat from a very good, whole carcase, nose to tail, third generation, artisan butcher in the Cantal, who gets his veal and beef from local farms. All his veal is labelled ‘Veau de Cantal, 9 mois sous la mère.’
But I don’t know the provenance of his pork, so buy that elsewhere.
we bellow “pigs in space” when we go past the local pig farm… love seeing them snuffling about. why not ask your butcher where the pork comes from??
I think it’s one of the few areas where UK food labelling is better than in France, the English flag up rare breeds’ pork, and because it’s so much warmer here (in the Aveyron) I 'm very suspicious of any pork that isn’t labelled as I assume (possibly incorrectly) that it’s been raised indoors in pens.
For that reason, I only buy porc noir fresh from one butcher. They sell very flavoursome cuts from a traditional breed of pigs that live in the forests north of Toulouse. Ironically there’s a guy on the Lot, about a km downstream from us, who also raises black pigs in a small field, but he’s got so many very ggressive privée signs and electric fences that we’ve never had the courage to knock on his door and ask where we can buy his pork
Agree. When I dig into many of the appealing labels on food here that suggest high welfare standards for the animals they have little substance, and there is very little control and enforcement. 9 mois sous la mère is good, and if the price bears it out possibly accurate too. Same with porc noir, there is no way all the pork sold as such can be full free range animals, as apparently less than 2% of pigs raised in France are - and I doubt they are all all living in the forests north of Toulouse.
Here flavour is king. And animal welfare hardly enters the court. For example, poulet de Bresse command high prices for the flavour, and spend the last two weeks of their life without beaks and claws in in a tiny cage being stuffed with food.
Things have changed over the years I used to go back to the UK in the late nineties early 20’s but there is no need now most things I originally missed can now be found online or in local shops
I have always bought my underwear from M and S but discovered outlets in Gibraltar and Athens Fairy liquid and first rate Cheddar in Spain I will not be going back soon but just as ashes one day to be scattered on an ancient Cotswold hill fort with my Dad and Wife
I should have said when I lived there eight years ago
I sort of know what you mean. Our Grand Frais is a bit schizophrenic in that some things are ridiculously expensive, and other things are ridiculously cheap. It does though have a really good selection of goods from other parts of the world (not the UK 
). It’s also really good for some of the more exotic fruit and vegetables that I occasionally use.
My OH once tried to tell the ‘you get less than that for murder’ joke to a neighbour who told us that he had been married 45 years. I don’t think it went down well. He was known locally for being a bit of a grumpy old sod, but we actually got on reasonably well with him, so I don’t think he held it against us.
Agreed… We have Carrefour, Leclerc and Lidl on our doorstep but they’re useless for certain ingredients we need when cooking Indian or Chinese recipes, for example.