Supermarkets are mixing cheaper imported beef with British, says the National Beef Association. Taking advantage of reduced prices for beef from the Republic of Ireland, several retailers are now mixing imported beef with British beef to avoid increasing prices for home-produced beef.
Only Morrisons, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Co-op, Budgens sell 100% British. Tesco’s sales of British beef have dropped from 98% to 90% since 2007, while just 60% of ASDA’s beef is British. Anyone wishing to buy British beef should certainly avoid Netto, which imports all its beef. Despite these varied sourcing policies, surprising results emerge from price comparisons.
Clarissa Dickson Wright rifles through some food packaging and discusses the problem of vague and misleading labelling with Tory spokesmen. All part of the Tories new Honest Food campaign: meat labelled ‘British’ should be born and bred in Britain
The Conservative Party launches a campaign for honest food, demanding that food labelled “British” should be born and bred in Britain. It’s hard to argue with but sadly often not the case in Britain today.
Discovery is the earliest commercial apple variety, ripe in mid-August. For a few weeks, Discovery apples are the best around, juicy, crunchy and aromatic.
The distribution and infrastructure of food, including rare look inside a supermarket distribution centre, part of the endless complex movement of goods.
Charting the striking changes in when we eat between 1961 and 2001
The UK government is at last waking from its long complacent slumbers and asking serious questions about food security. After enjoying an abundant supply of ever cheaper food for the last five decades, the developed world is beginning to realise that we can’t take the essentials of life for granted indefinitely.
Posted in food in politics, food matters | Also tagged agriculture, crops, defra, environment, food security, fruit, london, meat, oil, resilience, Sustainable food |
The Co-operative Group has announced today that it’s agreed to buy Somerfield for just short of £1.6 billion. The co-op is different from other retailers. It’s owned by its customers (those who elect to become members) and has a long commitment to quality, healthy food and to the environment and animal welfare. This is a momentous development in British retail.
The welfare of chickens has received long overdue attention this year. Most prominent has been Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Chicken Out! campaign, which may not have succeeded in changing Tesco’s welfare policy (for now) but has evidently shifted some demand from conventional to the higher welfare Freedom Food, free range and organic chicken.
Rising demand, rising prices
Earlier this [...]
For their sublime aroma and intense sweetness, and for the sake of our desperately declining cherry orchards, do whatever it takes to find and eat some British cherries in July. We’re losing our cherry orchards at an alarming rate and the only way to save them is to eat more British cherries.
