The most irritating and ineffective person I ever knew used the line ‘bring me solutions not problems’
about as regularly as they consumed lattes.
But it actually sums up how I feel about some of the major retailers approach
to the current crisis British pork is facing. Pork is a cornerstone of British
society, without it a ‘Full English’ would be nothing. Try and think of it
without the bacon, black pudding and sausage. Nope I can’t imagine it either
and nor do I want to.
Many of the butchers I deal with have reputations
established by their prize winning sausages and pork pies. British pork is
something to be proud of, if you aren’t sure as to the origin of where yours
has come from then go to your local butcher who will be able to tell you
exactly which farm it has come from and what quality of life the animal has had
prior to slaughter. If you have to go to a supermarket then look for the redtractor symbol on the packaging.
Why do we need to save our bacon?
Pretty soon 10% of British pork production in the UK could
disappear (source: National Pig Association). This has come about due to
soaring costs in pig feed which has gone up dramatically recently. This is due to adverse weather conditions in
the USA and Europe where the wheat and soya is produced to create the feed.
What does this mean?
This will have a detrimental impact on the small to medium
pig farmers in the UK who work tirelessly to create a happy natural environment
for their pigs and thus produce great tasting pork, we could lose many of them
by Christmas. Cheap imports from Europe and the rest of the world could flood
our market. This is great news for the
big retailers as this will drive the cost of pork down making them big
savings and making it impossible for these small to medium pork producers to
get back into the game.
This is bad news for the consumers, the pigs raised on
continental Europe are not so fortunate in their standard of living. They are
often intensively reared in confined spaces, when an animal is not allowed to
run around and display natural behaviour the meat it produces is often
tasteless and needs to have a myriad of additives pumped into it to make it
taste of anything. Jamie Oliver, love him or hate him, demonstrates the two
different approaches to rearing pork in this short video.
What are the retailers saying?
The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which has some of the
UK’s biggest retailers as members’ has come to their defence. A spokeswoman from the BRC was recently
quoted in the Metro newspaper said that it was unfair to blame the supermarkets
for this situation as they aren’t the only buyers of pork and that consumers should
put pressure on food manufactures. Well
no indeed they aren’t but from speaking to BPEX around two thirds of the pork
bought in the UK is by supermarkets.
Surely the sector that has the biggest amount of buying
power has considerable sway over the food manufacturers? Besides more and more supermarkets take their
production in house, Morrisons are a prime example.
I can understand why the spokeswoman feels brow beaten,
having been a press officer myself it isn’t always the easiest of job when the
press are baying for your blood. After
the dairy farmers protests there will be many a press officer in the food
sector who dreads looking at their Blackberry and responds to Facebook and Twitter
message at a rate most pavlovian dogs would be proud of. The executives making
the decisions that the press officers have to make the statements on won’t have
had much sleep either. However this isn’t a personal attack, to respond as if
it is and point the finger elsewhere does nothing to help the situation and
makes it all the more exasperating to read about. Anyone can see that the
present system isn’t working.
The solution
From recent media coverage it should be crystal clear that
the way the big retailers choose to treat our farmers isn’t fair and it isn’t
winning them any favour with the consumers who want to preserve our rich
farming heritage (stop press this article from YouGov proves they want local too). All the supermarkets have to do is be prepared to pay slightly
more per animal and educate their consumers about why it is better to eat meat
raised under ethical conditions. Will
they do this? Well only time will tell.
In the meantime the best advice I can offer is to go back to
your local butcher for your pork, ask them where it is from and how it has been
looked after. Any good butcher will be
able to tell you this with relative ease and you can be confident that you are
getting a top quality without sacrificing your conscience.
More information
BPEX feed crisis centre has been setup to help farmers affected by the crisis.
