I have just come back from the FARMA (The National Farmers' Retail and Markets' Association) annual conference and was once again highly impressed by the professionalism and passion of the UK's farm food entrepreneurs.
Make no mistake, the horsemeat issue was a hot topic. My favourite take on it was one farmer who has sign-written a huge banner in his field promoting his beef burgers "No horsing around!!"
But aside of the banter, there is a serious message.
These farmers have spent their lifetimes providing quality food with full provenance. Some of them produce their own ready meals on the premises, using the same high quality produce that they sell in their shops - proper ready meals, not "Neddy meals" as one of them memorably tweeted last week.
The real underlying issue is that food producers and retailers have completely lost sight of the issue of proper food traceability and ethics. Why are we buying meat products on such a global scale? Why are there so many middle men involved in the supply chain? If producers and retailers aren't even able to make proper claims about the species contained in their products, how can they possibly claim they care about traceability?
This is all being built up as a criminal issue and, of course, there is an element of this, but these criminal gangs have only been able to exploit the situation because of the lack of care in traceability exercised by the people providing our food.
We are also waiting to hear about the potential health issues. I have horses which all have passports, required by law in the UK, which I have signed to attest that the horse will never be killed for meat. This means that my vet can treat them with any drug they may need to keep them healthy, confident that these powerful drugs will never enter the food chain to endanger human health. Do they have the same laws elsewhere in Europe? I don't know the answer to this question.
These farm producers have faced difficult competition from the supermarkets and have been accused of being expensive, not true in my personal experience. But now we know the real price of cheap processed foods!
So where can consumers buy with confidence without needing a DNA testing kit? With the real guardians of food traceability and provenance, local farm retailers and local butchers, of course. It seems that many consumers have worked this out and sales at farm shops and real butchers are rising fast. Long may it continue.
Tracy Worcester: Horsegate Will Run and Run
Horse meat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What's So Bad About Horse Meat, Anyway? - Businessweek
Europe's Horse Meat Scandal Casts Light on Food Taboo
What's behind the horsemeat contamination scandal? - CNN.com
Horsemeat scandal set to spur tougher EU food tests | Reuters
Horse Meat Scandal: Is the Era of Cheap Food Over?
Horsemeat Auctions? Horses Sold For As Low As $50 In Shocking California ...
Horse Meat Found in British Food
If horses were raised properly for meat, like beef, and subject to the same regulations, I would have thought that horsemeat would be a far sight more expensive than beef. It wouldn't be easy to fatten a horse for meat because overweight horses are very prone to laminitis, a cripplingly painful, life threatening illness.
Firstly I would like to point out where most Farm Shops are on traceability, Most of us would be able to tell you not ot only the species that is in your ready prepared meal but also which animal it was - It's name ( or ear tag number). Which field it was reared in. What it ate. How old it was, its Parents and Grand Parents.I am happy to open up my butchery at any time to the public and show them the full traceability from field to fork.It was only a matter of time before this happened in mass produced product as people had started competing purley on price. People have come to expect to be able to by burgers and sausages for a 1/4 of the price the raw material should cost. Surley if the store is retailing the cheapest cut of beef at £5.99kg and burgers are £2 kg the penny should drop.Now is the time for people to realize that farmers in the Uk are bound by 73 differnt regulations to be able to supply to supermarkets yet these don't apply to their foreign suppliers. If ever there was a time for us to shout ' Best to Buy British' now is it. If you are in a store and their processed product is cheaper than the raw materia you think it is mad of now is the time to ask the question WHY?
4. The final irony is that continual downward price pressure by the supermarkets onto their processor-suppliers have forced the suppliers into illegal activities that result in the current scandal. If the supermarkets put their money where their mouth is and paid a decent price, British farmers would be more profitable and would be able to produce all the beef, etc they require, so there would be no need for imports!!!!
5. At the end of the day, if there is a long convoluted supply chain, there will be a middle man somewhere along it trying to make a fast buck. The long-term relationships built up between Farm Shops and their local abattoir and farmers engenders trust and confidence, and will result in thriving local communities with good quality food. Surely this is worth paying for?
I thought your piece was excellent, so thank you for supporting us.
Cheers
Andy Jeffery (Farmer)
Farringtons Farm Shop Bristol, Voted Best Farm Shop In Britain 2012 www.farringtons.co.uk
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You may not know this, but we sometimes check our meals/cakes/etc against Tesco’s, and we consistently find that:
1. Whilst the product looks the same as ours on the shelf, it is priced much lower. Investigate further, and you find ours is very much deeper, and the price per kilo of product for Farrington’s is often cheaper or similar. Hence the perception of the consumer is that we are more expensive, but in practice we are not!!!!
2. The contents of these products then need examining. Ours have a short list of basic ingredients, all of which you would recognise (eg flour, butter, etc). Tesco products (and probably other supermarkets) contain an extremely long list of ingredients, some of which have chemical names. They contain these to enhance flavour and to give a longer shelf life, neither of which we believe in. Do you really want to eat chemicals?
And on the crisis generally:
3. British farmers have had to comply with numerous edicts on animal welfare and traceability, and spend large amounts of money each year not only complying with these edicts, but also paying for the inspections. They then get told their products are too expensive, and products are sourced abroad where controls are more lax. Galling or what!!
Andy at Farrington's to be continued !!
Surely, again, we are asking that many suppliers provide information to their customers without ENFORCING spot checks on a regular basis. How on earth can people rely on declarations given from food suppliers, without safety checks on a regular basis?
My concerns relating to horse passports are many. They can be easily counterfeited and issued (much like MOT certificates) and if someone is determined to offload drugged horsemeat, you can bet they will. Notwithstanding the fact that I'm told you can buy microchips from the internet which rules out that option also.
The buck stops with the retailer. Its THEIR responsibility in their chase for high profits and willingness (without proper testing) to provide us with mislabelled and/or potentially unsafe foods.
Locally sourced food is great... if you can afford it.
Using a family butcher is great... if you can afford it.
Going with fresh ingredients makes better food than pre-made meals... if you have money, time, and energy to make these meals.
The reason why cheap food from supermarkets remains popular isn't that people are cheapskates, it's that at the lower end of the income spectrum you often have money, time, and energy enough to stop at one place to get food rather than visiting a dozen smaller places.
Farmer's markets are amazing. Quality local butchers are amazing. They're also out of the price range of an awful lot of people.