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.
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.
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, British, crops, defra, environment, food security, fruit, london, oil, resilience, Sustainable food |
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 [...]
Absence
Still from Our Daily Bread – spraying sunflowers
Loyal visitors to the Tracing Paper will have noticed a distinct lack of activity over most of the last year. I’m ashamed that I only just avoided a clear six month hiatus with a (very) brief post about the superb documentary on the modern food industry, Our Daily [...]
Just when it all seemed to be mercifully over, foot and mouth disease has returned in the UK. Keeping up with foot and mouth developments.
The re-emergence of foot and mouth disease in the UK last Friday is a tragedy, most of all for the blameless farmers who have seen their livestock struck down, but also for livestock farmers across the country; the meat trade, from hauliers and abattoirs to butchers and pie-makers; rural tourism businesses; and everyone who enjoys [...]
What was in season 146 years ago? Here’s Mrs Beeton’s list of Things in Season in April
To decode your food, use The Tracing Paper’s Food Tracer – a searchable list of all UK identification codes.
What are those oval codes?
If you buy meat – or fish, milk, cheese or any food produced from or by an animal – in the European Union, you should find an oval symbol like this somewhere on [...]
Philip Pullman once wrote that books are not eggs, his point being that every book is different whereas we expect every egg we buy to be the same. Agreed, books should not be treated as a commodity, but nor should eggs. Every egg is an individual creation, laid by a hen of some particular variety, fed and kept in a particular way, in a particular location.
