We now have a grand total of 1 producer!!! in our Honest Food Hall of Fame.
However, we feel it inappropriate to place our own business in this category (although we are confident we qualify). The obvious conflict of interest apart, we want to celebrate all great local food producers and to do that we need to avoid being seen as self-promoters.
Feel free to visit our website if you wish but we will not be promoting our own meat through this blog.
For high quality food producers like us, labelling is a big issue. We go to great lengths to produce food that tastes amazing, that benefits the environment that we work and live in and safeguards the rare breeds of livestock native to this country. We charge a premium because our produce is of higher quality.
So it really winds one up when you see “environmental”, “Natural” or “green” food labelled in the supermarket, that you know perfectly well cannot be so. The scale of production needed for any supermarket precludes it. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s great TV series exposing the complete dishonesty in the labeling of oven ready chickens being a prime example of what goes on.
Even worse than this….I recently saw a massive industrial scale farm locally, selling their lambs on the basis that they are reared “naturally”. I happen to know the farm manager (who is a great guy socially), so I also know that they fatten their lambs on the remains of their vining peas. A crop that is so heavily sprayed with chemicals that they might as well be fed on DDT.
How on earth is this “natural”?
Artisan food in Britain is booming. There has never been more choice in locally produced food. The supermarkets are getting in on the act and even standardised food is packaged with a rustic, homemade feel.
There are some fantastic producers out there and this blog intends to be a place to celebrate the best of them. But food is not just about high-end, gourmet quality products. We can’t feed everyone on Foie-gras and Kobe beef. In the vast spectrum of food, information is the key and if you pay a premium for what you think is a good product then you should get something extra.
Unfortunately things are not so clear here. “Aged” or “matured” meat is not the same as “hung” meat. Do you want your beef injected with “maturing” chemicals? More to the point do you want to pay extra for it or would you prefer they left it alone in the first place?
Have you been led to believe “Organic” meat is free of Chemicals?
After finally finishing shearing last night I decided to crack on and start the blog that I have been planning for some time.
Championing great food producers and revealing the tell-tale signs of the ones that are not quite what they seem.
I hope you enjoy the posts to come.
