Jamie Saves Our Bacon - Ch4 - January 29th

[pigpicker]

I thought I'd start a new thread for this program which is part of Ch4's Great British Food Fight.

For anyone interested it should give a very good insight into the levels of welfare employed by UK farmers vs continental farmers and where no-one's expecting it to heap massive amounts of praise on intensive production practices we are expecting it to increase the demand for British pork!

Here's a bit of insider info from the National Pig Association website ...

"Increased demand expected as Jamie champions British pork

The British pig industry is bracing itself to meet increased demand for Quality Standard Mark pork. In a couple of weeks Jamie Oliver will be doing for pigs and pork what he helped do for chickens and eggs.

Last year Jamie's Fowl Dinners looked at chicken and egg production, now he is turning his attention to the pig industry for the follow-up, The Great British Food Fight.

He will tell how Britain's pig farmers are going out of business and pork production in Britain is under threat. In his 90-minute programme he will attempt to find out why, and to examine what can be done to support farmers.

The programme is scheduled for January 29 on Channel 4.

Jamie Oliver says he wants to help consumers make better-informed choices about the food they eat, by showing exactly how pigs live and die to put pork, ham and bacon on consumers' plates.

With the help of the industry, from producers to retailers, he follows the production process from birth to slaughter and on to supermarket shelves. He looks at how pigs have been bred to suit the demand for lean meat and to maximise choice cuts.

He'll be investigating how the greater cost to British farmers of meeting higher welfare standards has left them open to competition from some mass producers from the European Union, who minimise costs, but may have questionable levels of animal welfare compared to British standards.

He will also looks at how food labeling is leaving customers who want to buy British confused. And he'll be cooking cheap, but tasty cuts of pork to feed a family on a budget."

[joconnor]

Jamie Oliver gives me tourettes. I can't stop saying **** repeatedly whenever he appears on the tellybox.

[goTimmygo]

Me too, usually proceeded by "Moped riding, fat-tongued, mockney........"

[pigpicker]

:)
I concur but the prog should still be good

[camaj]

Increased demand? Don't most supermarkets sell british pork mainly? Are people going to start buying more pork as a result? I can't see the share of Britsh pork increase as it must be close to 100% already.

[pigpicker]

Increased demand? Don't most supermarkets sell british pork mainly? Are people going to start buying more pork as a result? I can't see the share of Britsh pork increase as it must be close to 100% already.

As a country we're 40% - 50% self sufficient in pork i.e. we have to import 50% - 60% of all the pork that we eat.

[alsemail]

As a country we're 40% - 50% self sufficient in pork i.e. we have to import 50% - 60% of all the pork that we eat.

Have to?
or companies choose to as it's cheaper etc.

[AndyWilson]

The world is a better place now I've discovered you can buy veggie "pork pies" in Sainsbury :)

[anguk]

The world is a better place now I've discovered you can buy veggie "pork pies" in Sainsbury :)
That's just so wrong, veggie pork pies! They'll be doing veggie black pudding next! ;)

[pigpicker]

Have to?

Yes.
You can work out how many kgs of pork that all the pigs produced in the UK would produce per year.
Then there are companies like Taylor Nelson Sofres ( http://www.tnsglobal.com/ ) who collect and analyse market information. These companies can work out the total consumption of pork/pork products in the UK.

These 2 pieces of info tell us that as things stand we are only approx 45% self sufficient for pork as a country. This leaves us with 2 choices:
1) Don't import, let demand far outstrip supply and watch the price of pork rocket to levels where consumers will just not buy.
2) Import European pork to satisfy demand and keep a lid on prices

So I would say yes we have to import pork.


or companies choose to as it's cheaper etc.

Yes European pork is cheaper than our own for a couple of reasons:
a) A majority of EU farmers do not have the costs associated with higher welfare standards to contend with
b) They are more efficient than us and can produce more pigs per year

This means that supermarkets like imported pork because it allows them to increase sales via promotions and discounted prices and at the same time maintain (or even improve) margins.
Also, because of our dodgy labelling laws, you can label imported pork from (fro example) Dutch pigs as 'British' if the meat has been processed in Britain so the housewife is tricked into thinking she is buying british. :razz:
The public were made aware of this during the recent Irish dioxin debacle and hopefully this practice will soon be made illegal.

[Johnny Vodka]

Good Guardian article on this theme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/06/animal-welfare-food-bacon

I'd always try and buy British pork, but wasn't aware of the labelling con before.

[douglasb]

The world is a better place now I've discovered you can buy veggie "pork pies" in Sainsbury :)

Quorn now do little Scotch eggs too.

A bigger problem reported in the papers over the weekend is that we seem to have signed up to something that will drastically reduce our ability to grow staples like potatoes and onions using various chemicals. As the wettest part of the EU, this will impact on us the most and it seems to have been a case of we signed without reading the treaty properly.

[Woz]

When I were a lad, meat was expensive and people appreciated it (and honestly this wasn't THAT long ago).
We seem to have lost all perspective of how much meat should cost.
I say enforce good farming practice, refuse to import meat that doesn't reach UK standards of welfare and let meat prices rise to the point where people treat it with the respect it deserves.

Everyone's a winner - the farmers get a fair price, the animals get treated properly and the people of Britain start bulking out their meat with vegetables and get more healthy as a consequence.

[anguk]

When I were a lad, meat was expensive and people appreciated it (and honestly this wasn't THAT long ago).
We seem to have lost all perspective of how much meat should cost.
That's a very good point, when I was young we didn't have chicken half as much as we have it now and when we did it was always as a roast on Sunday. I can never remember having chicken breasts, always just the whole bird.

Thinking about it we mainly seemed to have the cheaper cuts of meat like belly pork, neck of lamb, braising steak etc and a joint was just for Sunday & special occasions.

[MrHat001]

Good Guardian article on this theme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/06/animal-welfare-food-bacon

I'd always try and buy British pork, but wasn't aware of the labelling con before.
Going from that article it seems that the UK is already doing a much better job than the rest of Europe. Be interesting to see if Jamie takes on just UK farms or if he has he guts to try and confront farmers in any of the EU countries as well.

[camaj]

These 2 pieces of info tell us that as things stand we are only approx 45% self sufficient for pork as a country. This leaves us with 2 choices:
1) Don't import, let demand far outstrip supply and watch the price of pork rocket to levels where consumers will just not buy.
2) Import European pork to satisfy demand and keep a lid on prices

If jamie is successful then surely prices will go up if demand for British Pork increases?

Of course there's a third option, British farmers increase supply which would counter this.

You say that 50-60% of the pork we eat is imported. Like I say almost all the pork I've seen for sale is British I'm sure, so I can only assume that the rest is used as an ingredient in other products like pies and sausages (which I don't eat to be fair). Come to think of it I eat a lot of beef, maybe too much! I need to start eating chicken

As woz says meat should be expensive but I'm sure people will substitute it with other things than veg, which is expensive. In one of Jamies books he mentions they do this in italy, where they eat meat maybe once a week and have meat free meals the rest of the time.

[pigpicker]

Good Guardian article on this theme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/06/animal-welfare-food-bacon

Cheers JV :thumbs: I missed that last week. That was a very well written and accurate overview of the current pork situation. The Morgans are very good pig farmers by the way.


I say enforce good farming practice, refuse to import meat that doesn't reach UK standards of welfare and let meat prices rise to the point where people treat it with the respect it deserves.

Everyone's a winner - the farmers get a fair price, the animals get treated properly and the people of Britain start bulking out their meat with vegetables and get more healthy as a consequence.

In principle I agree with you, Woz and these points have been raised before within the industry but banning the import of meat from the EU would be illegal (how ironic!) and so it continues to flood in. Also the retailers would kick up one hell of a storm as their source of cheap meat would disappear! Interestingly the cost of importing this cheaper meat has increased 20% year on year due to the increasing strength of the euro.
This has resulted in making the more welfare-friendly, british pork a lot more cost competetive in recent weeks.

Going from that article it seems that the UK is already doing a much better job than the rest of Europe. Be interesting to see if Jamie takes on just UK farms or if he has he guts to try and confront farmers in any of the EU countries as well.

He definitely will be going abroad to show viewers how pigs are raised in other EU countries (our company was advising his producers).
I don't think it will be a confrontational type of program though. Instead it will be aimed at educating the viewing public allowing them to make a more informed buying choice.

If jamie is successful then surely prices will go up if demand for British Pork increases?

Of course there's a third option, British farmers increase supply which would counter this.

Not really.
The British pig industry is financially not very well off. In fact that's an understatement. It has halved in size over the last 10 yrs as rising costs and diminishing returns have forced a lot of farmers to quit.
A majority of those who have managed to stay in the job have been unable to reinvest in their units and as such are not in a position to simply ramp up production to take advantage of any extra demand created by this program. Pig production (any animal production for that matter) is not a tap that you can just turn on and off.
It takes over 10 months from getting a sow pregnant to her piglets going for slaughter so for anyone to take advantage of this rise in demand they would have to have started planning back in March 2008!

You say that 50-60% of the pork we eat is imported. Like I say almost all the pork I've seen for sale is British I'm sure, so I can only assume that the rest is used as an ingredient in other products like pies and sausages (which I don't eat to be fair).

You may have fallen into the trap that retailers want you to fall into. They know that 'Britishness' is a strong selling point and they are very clever at making customers think they are buying british.
Whilst shopping in a supermarket the best way to guarantee that you are buying british meat (meat that is raised to welfare standards higher than those in the EU) is to look for this mark on the packaging ...

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7376/qualityassuredporksk1.gif (http://imageshack.us)

http://www.meatmatters.com/sections/labelling/quality_marks-pork.php

[camaj]

It takes over 10 months from getting a sow pregnant to her piglets going for slaughter so for anyone to take advantage of this rise in demand they would have to have started planning back in March 2008![QUOTE]

Which is why the article is so strange. It talks about an increase in demand, presumably it won't be increase in demand for non-british pork, that's the whole point. So either British producers increase supply or the price goes up


Whilst shopping in a supermarket the best way to guarantee that you are buying british meat (meat that is raised to welfare standards higher than those in the EU) is to look for this mark on the packaging ...

That's exactly the basis for my comment. Like I say, foreign meat is probably used as an ingredient where you wouldn't notice the absence of the mark. That said I'm sure sainsbury's TTD sausages have it, but I rarely buy pork.

[pigpicker]

So did anyone watch this?
I thought it was really well done. I even warmed slightly to Mr Oliver!

[capricorn1]

Yes I watched it, I'm not a great pork fan but we do get bacon and sausages occasionally. From now on we'll be double checking for the British pork standard mark, no mark, no sale!

Quite frankly I'm disgusted that we can import pork that is produced in conditions that would be (quite rightly) illegal here. Our farmers don't have a chance.

[scoobyood]

Yeah.. and clearly Tesco are utterly stupid. They appear to make no effort on any of these shows or move towards supporting British produce.
I've been awoken to their disdain for their customers over this past week or so... definitely will be going out of my way to avoid them. And try and get my friends to do the same.

[Richie]

Waitrose have just sent out an email extolling the virtues of their outdoor reared, British only pork! Coinkydink? ;) Tesco could learn a thing or two from other supermarkets right about now!
http://www.waitrose.com/food/productranges/meat/pork.aspx

[James45]

Outdoor reared pork, always usually tastes so much better as well.

Interesting that of the pork we do produce, there's only demand for the loin and leg, the belly (the tastiest of tasty) and shoulder is sold on the cheap back to Europe. I'll make sure any pork I buy from now on is British, the labeling thing is disgraceful!! And I agree it's important we look at making these other cuts popular again.

Pork shoulder for Sunday dinner I think.

[LiviLion]

Thought it was a very good program and just a pity it wasn't on BBC1 or ITV where the audience would have been bigger as the issues raised were very important.

I had no idea pigs could be kept like that in Europe so it's British pork for me now. That pork shoulder looked very tasty too so think I will try and get hold of one for Sunday roast.

[Symo]

Love him or hate him, you can't fail to see the genuine passion in JO when he does this kind of thing.

Interesting program, learned some new stuff, will DEFINATELY try a shoulder, and my dislike for TESCO's has, unbelievably, increased.

Supermarkets seem to be pretty souless enterprises but, good god, they are the lowest of the low.

[farmroad38]

Just watched this. I thought the bits with the supermarkets and politicians was pretty bloody pointless - of course they're going to say they'll do something on camera. The proof will be if they actually do what they've said.

Lke others, I was fairly horrified by the conditions that pigs are kept in on the Continent. It was also ridiculous that we import the favoured bits, but have to export the parts that the public don't want. I'm not a big eater of pork joints, but do eat a fair bit of gammon and bacon, so I'll be looking more carefully at the source of that now.

[pigpicker]

I've met Jane Kennedy a couple of times and although she's new in the job (appointed minister for farming and the environment in Oct last yr) she's shown more promise for the UK pig industry than all her predecessors put together, so I'll give her a bit more time yet before judging her. She's got a clear set of objectives now to see if she can really make a name for herself.

Overall I'm really glad to read some of the reactions to the most important issues that face our industry. I was becoming concerned that most shoppers just weren't bothered about buying high welfare, british food and instead were just concerned with minimal price but it seems that people are just being completely confused by the sneaky labelling tactics.
Some supermarkets really are getting too big for their boots and if something is not done soon to reign them in then they're only going to get worse.

[farmroad38]

I've just got back from Tesco (sorry, I was passing and had to pick up some stuff!), where I checked out their pork products.

They did have pork shoulder joints, and I can confirm they're amazingly cheap! But the cheeky monkeys have put stickers on a lot of their British pork - "Inspired by Jamie Oliver's latest Ch4 programme". Bet they haven't changed any of their products with the misleading labelling though.

[pigpicker]

*******!
You should see how much money that suppliers are 'asked' to pay in order to keep their products on some retailers' shelves.

Talk about tail wagging the dog!

[LiviLion]

I got a pork shoulder joint on Friday and had it for Sunday tea.

Was very tasty indeed and was very cheap at £2.25 per kg.

Would recommend it to anyone, will definately have this again.

[TheFatBoy]

I went to one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants and had pork belly. Cost a fortune in there, but was the best tasting piece of pork I've ever eaten in my life.

In this months Good Food mag is a Gordon Ramsay restaurant for pork belly that, according to the mag, he serves in his restaurant.

So I went to our village butcher yesterday and bought 1.5kg of pork belly - £6.20-odd. Cheapness. If I can make it taste half as good as it did in his restaurant, I'm going to be dead this time next month from over-consumption of pork belly. :D

[Woz]

In Camberley there's a brilliant idea that's been put into action.
There's an empty department store (A&N) that's been made into a permanent indoor farmer's market. Every town needs one of these!

Given that most of the towns in this area seem to be literally dying it would be a great way to use empty shops like Woolworths and perfect for cutting out the middle man (the supermarkets).
They just need to keep the stall rental price way down low to encourage local farmers to sell there. I'd happily do a lot of my food shopping there.

[James45]

Councils should provide the space rent free.

[TheFatBoy]

I agree, but they won't. The government should be ensuring that every time public money is spent, it gets spent with a British company if at all possible, but they don't, they import pork because it's cheaper. Well, the economy is already ******, I can't believe they're saving that much by importing meat to serve to public servants.

[bumfrog]

in fairness, it's a catch 22 situation. People watch things like this, have a go at the supermarkets and the government, when surely the best form of action is vote with ones feet and just not buy stuff at the supermarket. Get yourself down to the local butchers and they will be able to tell you exactly where the meat has come from, it will be fresher, better quality, and possibly cheaper.

If enough people started doing this, supermarkets would eventually take notice, but people are just too damn lazy and prefer to point the finger at everybody else, when in fact they could quite easily make educated informed choices, but alas, they don't.

Ahh well...

[BigDavie2000]

I don't think the problem here is supermarket cuts of meat. These are usually well labelled as most of it is British. I think the problem is meat based products. You can't blame someone who bought a pack of pork pies with "Made with 100% British sourced Pork" and thought they had british reared pork in them.

Edit: Just had a look on google and I have found Asda, Morrisons, M&S, Somerfield, Aldis and Lidl's all closer than my most local butcher

[bumfrog]

Edit: Just had a look on google and I have found Asda, Morrisons, M&S, Somerfield, Aldis and Lidl's all closer than my most local butcher

so what if supermarkets are closer? That just proves my point exactly about people being lazy. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but it's true!

If people really did give a poo about what they were eating, they'd take a lot more time and effort to source decent quality.

[Woz]

We tried to find a local farm shop, but until this one sprang up in Camberley, the only one on offer we could find was Prince Charles' one...and believe me, if you think Waitrose is expensive, you ain't seen nothing!

If councils were forced to provide for a covered farmer's market within each town, it could go some way to rectifying the power the supermarkets have. And sadly (as is evident from the School Meals programme) you can't rely on people to put the extra effort in - you need to make it as easy as any other option.

[pigpicker]

I've just got back from Tesco ...... Bet they haven't changed any of their products with the misleading labelling though.

Now how is this anything BUT misleading for anyone wanting to buy British produce? ...
:mad::razz::mad:

well at least it doesn't contain NUTS!



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[NicolaUK]

I thought of this thread today when I read this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7891695.stm

Seems logical to me and could be quickly brought in :thumbs:

[pigpicker]

Yes I read this today on the National Pig Assoc website. Excellent news and hopefully easily achievable.
It's through little things like this (and the credit crunch!) that Cameron's starting to gain a bit of popularity.

[farmroad38]

Just back from a shopping trip at Morrisons - been shopping there much more as I was so fed up with Tesco taking the **** with things like this (and the way they treat their staff).

I was after some bacon, and I was checking the labels. All of the packets had little flags on - okay, they had Danish and Dutch bacon, but at least they're letting you know where it came from. Picked up a pack with a Union flag on and took a look at the back... all it said was "Packed in the UK"! :mad: No other indication of where the meat originated, but I'm assuming by the wording, it wasn't British reared pork.

So now I'm hacked off with Morrisons too. I'm running out of supermarkets! :(

[MarkR]

But Morrisons were doing British Shoulder Pork at only £2 a kg better than half price. Bought a whopper to go with some proper stuffing we had left over frozen from Xmas for a Pork and Stuffing cob night.