Free-range chicken From a Carlow farm to Lawlor's Butchers, Rathmines

The Product: Free-range chickens bought whole or broken up into fillets, drumsticks, thighs and wings and stuffed with Parma ham, cream and spinach, garlic, pine nuts and basil.

The Farm: Carlow Food Limited, owned by Betrum Salter, rears some 10,000 chickens on each 70-day cycle. When the chickens reach 30 days of age, they are transferred to mobile sheds in open fields where they are fed a home-produced wheat meal.

The Process: On the farm's factory, chickens are slaughtered, plucked and then refrigerated for 24 hours before the packing and bar-coding process commences. The full traceability procedure allows for tracking the entire life span of each free-range chicken.

The Shop: Lawlor's Butchers in Rathmines, which has operated under the name of Lawlor's since the 1940s, receives a delivery of between 200 and 300 chickens from the Carlow farm three times per week. The shop has used Carlow Food Limited, which was one the first farms to receive approval for supplying, as its supplier for almost five years. On Saturdays, the whole free-range chicken, retailing at around €13, proves most popular for those preparing a Sunday roast.

Compiled by Áine Kerr