Bag a happier turkey

If you're hoping to eat a flavourful and ethical turkey this Christmas, remember one thing: 85 per cent of British turkey is factory-farmed and no amount of basting and buttering can redeem it.

The turkey is, by nature, a semi-wild woodland birds, but it has been transformed into an indoor meat machine, designed to put on pounds of tasteless white breast meat in record time. These intensive turkeys are now so unnaturally top heavy that they are unable to mate so they have to be artificially inseminated. By the time they are ready for slaughter, it is not uncommon for turkeys to have ulcerated feet or hip injuries.

Animal welfare organisations allege that in some large abattoirs, turkeys are inadequately stunned before they are killed and even plucked while alive. Such a cruel death would be illegal but a mature turkey can, quite legally, hang upside down shackled by its legs for six minutes waiting on the slaughter line.

Unless you are explicitly told otherwise, assume that the turkey on the supermarket shelf has come from this system. Don't be taken in either by butter-basted turkey joints which promise "extra succulence and flavour". These usually contain only around 85 per cent meat and about 1.5 per cent butter. The rest is water and additives.

Happily, there are farmers up and down the land fattening splendid specimens for Christmas - and there's still time to bag one. Look out for the traditional flavoursome Cambridge Bronze and Norfolk Black breeds. These are usually reared as free-range so the birds have benefited from healthy outdoor feeding. Organic turkeys are highly desirable: preventative drugs are banned under organic standards, the birds spend most of their time outside and flock sizes are as small as 200.

Good independent butchers and some specialist food shops offer birds which have been hung for at least a week (as opposed to being plunged into boiling water so that their feathers fall off, which is the battery method) and are more flavourful as a result.

The free-range farmers and butchers outlet, The Ginger Pig, for instance, hangs its outdoor-reared, broadbreasted bronze turkeys for 10 days, dry-plucks them and then, in order to remove residual feathers, wax-plucks them. Fish and Fowl's slow-reared birds offer a good poultry flavour and are either organically-fed and outdoorreared or just outdoor-reared.

Among supermarkets, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer stock the biggest proportion of free-range birds. Waitrose stocks white, bronze and black free-range and organic bronze turkeys. M&S does free-range (access to outdoors) white and organic bronze turkeys. There's still just enough time to order direct from the farm, though.

WHERE TO FIND YOUR ETHICAL CHRISTMAS DINNER

Peele's Norfolk Black Turkeys, Norfolk: 01362 850237.

Kelly Turkey farms, Essex: 01245 223581; www.kelly-turkeys.com (the website provides information on outlets throughout London).

Sheepdrove Organic farm, Berkshire: 01488 71659; www.sheepdrove.com

Woodlands Organic Farm, Lincolnshire: 01205 722 491; www.woodlandsfarm.co.uk

Bath Organic Farms, Bath: 01225 421507; www.bathorganicfarms.com

The Fresh Food Company: 020 8749 8778; www.freshfood.co.uk. Mail order and deliveries.

The Ginger Pig, 8 Moxon Street, W1: 0207 935 7788; or Borough Market, Southwark Street: 020 7403 4721.

Fish and Fowl, 145 Highgate Road, London NW5: 020 7284 4184.

Randalls Butchers, 113 Wandsworth Bridge Road, Fulham: 020 7736 3426.

J Seal Butchers, 7 High Street, Barnes: 020 8876 5118.

Roberts & Edwards, 19 Leopold Road, Wimbledon: 01730 813146.