Frequently Asked Questions

Deliveries are available from Tuesday to Saturday of each week. When placing an order on our website, you will be able to select a delivery date using the date picking calendar at checkout and you can specify a date up to 8 weeks ahead.

If a delivery date is not specified, we will aim to dispatch your order on the next available date. If you place your order before 10pm, your order will generally be dispatched the next day, for delivery the day after e.g. if you place your order at 3pm on Monday, it will be dispatched Tuesday for delivery Wednesday. Orders placed after 10pm will be dispatched a day later e.g. if you place your order at 11pm on Monday, it will be dispatched Wednesday for delivery Thursday.

Our minimum order value is £37. A significant amount of labour and packaging goes into the preparation of each order, whatever the value, so a minimum order value ensures we protect our viability as a business and can continue to champion regenerative agriculture. Moreover, each order uses up resources such as packaging and fuel, so we feel maintaining a minimum order value is the environmentally responsible way to operate.

We accept payment with all major credit and debit cards, including American Express. Your payment will be taken as soon as the order has been placed. Our online payments are processed through our eCommerce provider.

Once we take your order, the team will get to work preparing your goods for the agreed delivery date.  We are happy to accommodate changes to your order as far as we possibly can.  You should phone the office number (0208 900 8585) and/or email office@ethicalbutcher.co.uk and we will endeavour to make the amendments you require.

Unless you have placed a special order requiring special stock or a special cut, or a collaborators' product, you may cancel your order until the time your meats have been prepared by our team. In the case of the above exceptions, if you wish to cancel, please call us immediately, and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Deliveries are available from Tuesday to Saturday of each week. When placing an order on our website, you will be able to select a delivery date using the date picking calendar at checkout and you can specify a date from 2 days away to up to 8 weeks ahead.

Unfortunately, as we do not handle the deliveries ourselves, you will not be able to specify a time of delivery. On the day of delivery, you will be sent a 1-hour delivery window by DPD, our chosen third-party courier.

If nobody is available at the primary delivery address (nominated by you at the time you place your order) to take delivery of the order, we will leave notification of the delivery instead either to the secondary delivery address or secure place (nominated by you at the time you place your order).

Our deliveries are made with “no signature required”. In the event that nobody is available to take delivery of your order at either your primary or secondary delivery address or you ask us to leave your goods unattended at a secure place, The Ethical Butcher expressly disclaims all liability that may arise in consequence of the delivery being left unattended, including, without limitation, theft, tampering or contamination, however caused.

If your delivery is refused or not accepted at a recipients’ address, we can not take responsibility for this and cannot offer a free replacement.

We have partnered with Route Shipping to give us and you peace of mind around the delivery of your order. Route provide shipping protection in cases where your order is damaged in transit, stolen or doesn’t arrive. This enables us to more promptly offer you a refund or replacement for your missing order. You will not be charged for this,  and we will handle any claims so you don’t have to, it’s all on us!

We package all of our meat inside a recyclable cardboard box. The meat is packed inside the box with WoolCool frozen gel packs to keep it cool in transit, and enclosed within insulating fleece liners, also supplied to us by WoolCool. The liners are made from a natural waste wool product that can be returned to us for reuse or put to a number of innovative environmentally beneficial uses to give back to nature. You can read more about these uses here.

All of our meat is shipped using a next-day delivery service, meaning it should be in transit for a maximum of 24 hours, often less than that. However, we have tested the effectiveness of our packaging and demonstrated that it can actually keep meat fresh and at a safe temperature for up to 48 hours.

We charge a flat rate of £5.99 for all deliveries throughout the year. Delivery charges for seasonal holidays such as Easter and Christmas may vary.

We wish everyone could enjoy our meat. Unfortunately, there are some parts of the UK we cannot reach due to shipping restrictions. We have listed all of the postcodes we do not currently ship to on our website here. This is subject to change. It is the buyer’s responsibility to be aware of these limitations as no refund will be offered for orders placed to these postcodes.

The Ethical Butcher champions regenerative farming - a compassionate approach that mimics natural cycles and gives back more to the land than it takes. We prioritise sourcing beef from small independent farms that adopt regenerative farming practices, including holistic land management and rotational grazing techniques. This type of land management encourages diverse plant growth, sequesters carbon, improves soil health, boosts biodiversity, and allows animals to live and roam naturally.

When necessary, we supplement our regenerative beef with high-welfare, grass-fed native breed beef from farms and cooperatives transitioning towards regenerative agriculture to support them through this process.

We look for certain accreditations and certifications to guide us, such as Pasture for Life, Regen Agri, A Greener World, and others. However, this is not currently a requirement of our suppliers. We take each farm on a case-by-case basis, as we know there are many out there farming in the right way, as nature intended, they just don’t have the certificate!

It goes without saying that high animal welfare is of paramount importance to us. Fortunately, regenerative farming systems that mimic nature are synonymous with high animal welfare. These farming systems are always free-range, outdoor, low-intensity systems that encourage animals to adopt natural herd structures, exhibit natural behaviours and farmers uphold extremely high levels of care. Moreover, animals are provided with a more natural diet. We also visit our farms and abattoirs to see for ourselves the high level of welfare standards they uphold. At an absolute minimum we require all farms and suppliers we work with to be Red Tractor/RSPCA Assured, but all go well above and beyond these standards.

We are not planning to reintroduce farm specific variants on all of our products in the near future. It is incredibly difficult, administratively, to provide that level of guarantee on named farm availability. The turnover of stock in our business is very high, meaning we have meat coming in and out of the business from numerous suppliers at all times and could not guarantee that when you placed your order, we would still have meat in stock from a particular farm by the time we dispatched it.

Also, given the fact all of our online stocking is done manually, due to the nature of selling whole carcass meat, it is very difficult to correctly estimate how much of each item should be in stock from a particular farm at any given time.

Instead, we simply find it more honest and deliverable to say that your meat will always be regeneratively sourced from one of our suppliers.

If you are particularly interested in one, or certain farms however, we would love you to try Farm Box by The Ethical Butcher. This is our periodic meat box that contains meat from a single animal on a single farm with the intention of helping consumers connect with the farmers and the land that produced the meat. That way, you will have guaranteed provenance on the farm and the animal that arrives at your door. We will be releasing details of our first Farm Box of 2025 very soon!

We champion regenerative farming, meaning this is what we look for in a farm or supplier. Sometimes, they are also organically certified, or farming to organic standards, but not always and this is not something we specifically seek or require. Therefore we do not market or label our products as organic.

All of our meat is grass-fed to a greater or lesser extent, certainly to a greater extent than any conventional meat you could buy in a supermarket. The legal requirement for a “grass-fed” label is a 51% pasture-based diet. Our animals have a significantly higher volume of pasture in their diets. We work with a number of Pasture for Life certified farms, which feed and finish their animals on only grass and grass derivatives such as hay and silage. Some of our other regenerative farms do finish their animals on a small amount of finishing ration but more typically, crops from arable rotations such as stubble turnips. As a general rule, all of our ruminant animals (beef, lamb) are on a predominantly pasture-based diet, minimum 90% forage. Our pigs and chickens are also outdoor-reared and pasture-based but are given sustainably sourced supplemental feeds.

Some of our meat is soy-free, such as our beef and lamb from Pasture for Life certified farms. Our pork and chicken are currently fed a supplemental feed that contains a certain amount of sustainably sourced soy. We would love to return to soy-free feed and our producers continue to innovate and strive towards doing so in a way that maintains a higher quality product at an accessible price.

All of our beef is hung after kill for 1-2 weeks to allow the pH levels in the meat to settle and the carcass to cool and relax. This also begins the process of aging and tenderisation. Upon receiving our beef, we then dry age all of the prime steak cuts (ribeye, sirloin, rump and fillet) until around 28 days or more. This is essentially a controlled decomposition of the meat, comprising dehydration and intensification of flavour and tenderness.

Our lamb, chicken and pork is not currently aged. We receive fresh deliveries of each on a weekly basis.

None of our meat is currently certified Halal or Kosher.

All of our meat is prepared fresh and can therefore be frozen upon delivery to you and before its use by date. On the highly exceptional occasion that we have to send you something frozen we will let you know in advance or label the product as such.