Plight of the Humble Bee

Right around the world there we are currently experiencing a collapse in the numbers of bees.  The decline of bee populations has been noticed in Europe and North America since the 1960s, but has really accelerated in the last twenty years.  Of course most pollinator species are wild and frankly we do not have data on their populations, but for managed bee colonies, figures across Europe show an approximate 50% drop in honey bee numbers since about 1990. 

Other studies provide corroborating evidence.  For instance in the UK there has been a 70% drop in the numbers of wild flowers requiring animal pollination over the same period, and butterfly numbers are similarly affected.  These statistics are sad in themselves but it’s bees that really matter.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) warns that on current trends, bees could be extinct in Britain within a decade.  This is not only bad news for honey enthusiasts, but it poses a serious potential threat to us all.  Many people today like to promote the idea that humans have escaped from nature, that we have the technological nouse to control our environment.  The truth is we are completely dependent on nature and the humble bee is a case in point.

Almost one third of total farm output depends on animal pollination, mainly by bees.  The list of plants affected includes:  nuts; nearly all fruit; brassicas such as cabbage, broccoli and sprouts; tomatoes; peppers, chilies and other spices; cucumbers; melons; marrows; courgettes;  aubergines; avocados; coconuts; tea and coffee.  Collectively these crops account for roughly 35% of all calories consumed globally.

Bee keepers have long suspected that agricultural (and horticultural) pesticides were to blame for the mysterious disappearance of bees from hives in a phenomenon labeled Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  However the chemical companies which produce the pesticides naturally refuted this and preferred to look for evidence of viruses or parasites, which would presumably need yet more pharmacological solutions.

Bees do have a variety of problems to contend with.  Disease does play its part, and man made problems such as industrial pollution and habitat loss are significant factors too.  But for some years now there has been clear evidence indicating that the use of systemic pesticides, known collectively as neonicotinoids could be having a devastating impact on bee populations.

Development of these products only began in the late eighties.  Today many seeds are pretreated with neonicotinoids.  They are designed to travel through the plant’s sap and protect the leaves, stems and shoots against harmful insects that munch upon them.  However, they also find their way in to the flowers, pollen and nectar.

Manufacturers of products such as Gaucho, Cruiser, Poncho, Merit and Flagship have conducted laboratory trials which demonstrate that the doses absorbed by bees through nectar are sub-lethal, but several other recent studies have shown that these chemicals affect the pollinators in unsuspected ways.  They specifically target the insects’ central nervous systems causing their internal navigation systems and memories to malfunction.  French beekeepers describe this as ’mad bee disease’.  The bees simply go out to forage and forget how to get back to the hive, which eventually dies of starvation.  These chemicals also weaken the animals’ immune system leaving them vulnerable to lethal fungal infections.  In both cases it is difficult to prove such deaths are caused by pesticides, but they are.

Last year, the European Commission asked The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to look at the impact of three such neonicotinoids: Imidacloprid, Clothianidin and Thiamethoxam, on bees, and on 16^th January this year EFSA published their findings.  The report found unacceptably high risks to honey bees from pollen, nectar and dust particles and where bees were exposed to sap through guttation (many plants naturally express sap through their leaves), the effect was ’acute ’.

Accordingly the EU Commissioner for Health & Consumer Policy, Tonio Borg, asked for a two year ban on the use of these three neonicotinoids across all member states.  A YouGov poll conducted for the online campaigning organization Avaaz found that over 70% of the UK public supported such a ban and Avaaz amassed over 2.5 million signatures from across Europe.

Despite a wealth of scientific data supporting the ban, the proposal was defeated on March 15^th in The Standing Committee on Food Chain and Animal Health made up of representatives from Member States within the European Union.   Thirteen countries supported the ban including: France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Poland.  Nine opposed, led by Romania and Bulgaria, and five, including the UK and Germany abstained.

The UK Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson ,says there was insufficient evidence.  His own department, DEFRA, has commissioned separate research in to the issue and will now wait for the results.  Privately it is widely believed that the big pharma manufacturers, especially Bayer and Syngenta, who dominate this market,  lobbied hard to avoid the ban.

So far so bad, but there is a glimmer of hope for the bees.  Since there was no overall majority in the European vote, it falls to the Commission itself to decide what to do next.  If the nations do not agree a compromise in the coming weeks, the Commissioner can implement the policy for them.  Mr Borg is currently considering what his next steps should be.

This would be a good time to make your opinion heard either by writing to the Commissioner directly, or by lobbying your MEP.  Alternatively, if you live in the UK you can sign the attached ePetition requiring the government to allow a Parliamentary debate on the subject.  The bees need all the help they can get!

 Lord Deben, better known perhaps as John Selwyn Gummer, was the Conservative farms minister in the nineties who famously fed beef burgers to his daughter to calm public nerves over BSE.  He is clearly not a man averse to taking the odd risk.  Yet he believes "If ever there were an issue where the precautionary principle ought to guide our actions, it is in the use of neonicotinoids. Bees are too important to our crops to continue to take this risk.”  I couldn’t put it better myself

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Are we saddled with the meat we deserve?

The current food scare in the UK concerning the presence of horse meat in the human food chain is a perfect scandal for our time. Here in Britain there is no tradition of eating horse, and the average person regards it as something akin to cannibalism to tuck in to dear old Neddy.  In this country, after all, charities find it easier to raise money for donkeys than for starving children.  Of course horse meat per se is perfectly safe for human consumption and it is widely sold and eaten elsewhere in Europe.   That’s why the government has been keen to paint this as a ‘food labeling’ issue rather than a concern over ‘food safety’.  The trouble with that argument is that if you don’t know what’s going in to your food you really can’t claim that it’s perfectly safe to eat can you?

But what makes this story perfect is the cast of potential villains. They chime perfectly with current social and political prejudices.

Owen Patterson, Secretary of State
for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

To start with, the Eurosceptic Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, initially tried to put the blame on our European partners and therefore somehow obliquely on the EU itself.

First he pointed the finger of blame at France, a well-known nation  of horse munchers. Then the search for a culprit spread to Romania, already in the spotlight as we brace ourselves for a new wave, or is a tsunami, of East European immigration.  First we get Romanian horse meat, he seemed to be implying, and then next year we get Romanian benefit scroungers!  He talked darkly of ‘an international criminal conspiracy’.  Europe’s a dangerous place. See what happens when we lose control of our borders?  This line of argument ended abruptly when horse meat was subsequently found entering the food chain at two British abattoirs.

Next up for blame was the dreaded quango.  Paterson has been quick to use the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as a shield.  The Tories have a long standing and non-specific antipathy to quangos, which undoubtedly includes the FSA.  Despite the fact that the number of FSA food inspectors has been halved since this government came to power, the minister has been quick to put primary responsibility for tackling the problem at their door.  In effect he has tried to use the agency to deflect attention from himself and the ministry.  Of course if the FSA fails to provide a solution, then it is just another indictment of quangos.

For the opposition, his Labour shadow Mary Creagh, has seen her profile boosted by the story.  She can rightly point out that this issue affects poor and low paid people disproportionately.  Mr Paterson might claim he would be prepared to eat a Findus lasagne, but nobody really believes that he ever has.  Government ministers earning £134,565 do not normally shop in the value range.  Somehow this story plays perfectly in to the Labour narrative of a government of toffs, out of touch with the needs of common people and primarily interested in helping their millionaire chums.  For some people no doubt, it’s a kind of sequel to ‘pastygate’.

Away from Westminster the argument has mainly been about the role of supermarkets and big food processors, already reviled for destroying high streets and small businesses, squeezing farmers, encouraging factory farming and raising food miles and CO2 emissions.  If you want to avoid horse meat in your burgers, goes one strand of the debate, go back to your local family butcher.  He might even know the name of the cow he’s chopping up for your dinner.

That argument is silly and insulting to many people who might be time poor as well as cash poor.  Actually there is some evidence that consumers have been turning to prime cuts in the wake of the continuing horse meat saga, but for many that is not an option and it’s not a solution.  This blog is a big supporter of the concept of buying fresh, local produce from local farms through small scale shops and distributors, but there is no way we are going to turn back the clock to some bucolic vision of Britain taken from a Thomas Hardy novel.  Food is a global industry and factory processed food, supermarkets and the like are here to stay.  Even poor people have a right to expect that the food they buy is safe and corresponds to the description on the packaging.

In fact this whole episode is a symptom of the inexorable rise of world food prices.   I have blogged previously on how the global supply of farm land is largely static and how a world population of over 7 billion is responsible for a long term and continuous upward trend in food prices.  Meat is particularly expensive to produce, and with world fish stocks in decline protein is becoming especially expensive with increasing demand from a new aspirational middle classes emerging in countries such as China, India and the Gulf states.  The high price of beef present s opportunities for unscrupulous operators to make money.  It’s a perfect capitalist crime. Exactly what we should expect from the lightly regulated free-market.

The truth is, on this occasion, may be awkward and uncomfortable for Mr. Paterson and his political friends, but we’ve got all the wrong characters in the dock.

We stand a much better chance of controlling this nefarious trade with the help of our EU partners and Europe wide regulations and controls.  It’s actually a strong argument in favour of the EU.  Remember the whole thing came to light thanks to the Irish Food Safety Authority alerting their British counterparts to their findings.

Within Britain we need a robust, confident and well-resourced FSA to tackle the small but ever-present threat in our domestic industry.  Nobody but the secretary of state is convinced by the government’s preference for voluntary schemes, self-regulation and nudge theory.  proper regulation is not the dead hand of the state interfering with wealth creation, it is the foundation of a safe and well-respected industry.  Far from being a break on growth it can facilitate it.

And yes we need supermarkets to wield their enormous power in the interest of consumers.  Only the big retailers have the resources and the motivation to drive criminals out of the industry and provide the safeguards that the public demands.

Stop this pointless cull

On 14^th December last year the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, announced to the House of Commons that the government would run two pilot schemes to cull badgers in England.  The pilots will assess the viability of addressing the problem of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in beef and dairy cattle by shooting wild badgers, which are known to be carriers of the disease.

Two areas have been chosen, one in West Gloucestershire and one in West Somerset, both hot spots for bTB.  The pilots are expected to last six weeks beginning in August or September this year.

The cull is naturally controversial. It’s opposed by the RSPCA, The Wildlife Trust, The Badger Trust and by roughly 60,000 members of the public who responded to the government’s own consultation exercise.  A poll conducted by GfK NOP for the BBC last summer indicated that 63% of the public opposed it too.

Caroline Spelman
Minister for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs

But in the words of Ms Spelman, ‘Doing nothing is not an option’.

bTB is rife throughout South West England and Wales and is spreading steadily to other parts of the country.  Badgers are known to spread the disease through saliva and urine.  The government’s response is to enforce compulsory skin tests for all cattle every 60 days and to slaughter infected beasts.  In 2010, 25,000 cattle were slaughtered in England alone, costing the taxpayer £91m in compensation for farmers.  Farms under TB restrictions are not allowed to export live animals.

These policies hit dairy farms particularly.  Although the government pays a market rate for slaughtered cattle, the farmer receives nothing for lost milk production and they have no option but to shoot male calves which might otherwise be sold for rearing elsewhere.

Although badgers are protected in the UK, many farmers have already taken the law in to their own hands and many badgers have been gassed in their sets, yet still the disease spreads.

The trouble is that culling does not work.

DEFRA says that the culls will be ‘science led’, but as Natural England, the government’s own wildlife advisors, have pointed out, it has been tried before, in the 70s and the 90s, and it proved ineffective at holding back the spread of the disease.

Moreover, an official £50m, ten-year study conducted for the government by a specially formed Independent Scientific Group (ISG), found that culling was ineffective at controlling the disease, and in fact caused it to spread more rapidly as surviving badgers scattered throughout the countryside, an effect known as ‘perturbation’.

Prof Lord John Krebs of Oxford University, who instigated the study, concluded in July 2011 that a four-year intensive cull which eradicated around 70% of the badger population might reduce incidence of the disease in cattle by 12 to 16%.

This is the reason that the previous Labour government rejected the proposals for a cull and also why similar plans were shelved last year by the Welsh government.

So what is the answer?

Well in the first instance let’s get this problem back in perspective.  The reasons that the government insists on slaughtering animals are:

·         To protect public health

·         Animal welfare

·         To protect Britain’s export market

But let’s take a closer look at these arguments.

Work by two senior zoologists, Prof David Torgerson of York University and Prof Paul Torgerson of Zurich University, has shown that there is little or no danger to public health posed by bTB provided milk is pasteurized.  In fact meat from infected cattle slaughtered under the government policy is currently sold for human consumption, so obviously the government agrees.

They also point out that most cattle exposed to the bacterium will not fully develop the disease within the time of their normal commercial life, and many won’t develop it at all.  In other words, the government’s policy which has been in place for 60 years is probably excessive and largely unnecessary.

The claims on animal welfare are clearly absurd.  Slaughtering animals because they might develop a disease to which a vaccine is available cannot be represented as concern for their welfare.

Trade with EU countries is often cited as a factor.  Well EU laws in this area only concern live animals.  In the last 20 years Britain’s exports of live cattle have never exceeded £3.3 million in annual value which hardly justifies annual control costs of almost £100m.

So should we do nothing and simply accept a level of TB in our cattle herd?

Well no.  What is rarely mentioned is that there is a viable vaccine for bTB.

Vaccinating cattle is currently seen as a non-starter because it is outlawed by EU law.  The current skin tests do not differentiate between an immunised cow and an infected one.  Further, DEFRA argues that “Not all vaccinated animals would be protected from TB and therefore vaccination alone will not be sufficient to demonstrate disease free status… and allow trade in those animals”. This is a disingenuous argument, as use of the skin test is also imperfect.  Currently it is estimated that one in five animals slaughtered under government guidelines is actually a false positive.  Similarly the test misses around 20% of infected cattle which may then be transported quite legally.

Would we reject vaccination of children against polio on the grounds that it’s not 100% effective?  Of course not.

Vaccinating badgers is also ruled out because of assumptions about cost and difficulty.  But another of DEFRA’s own agencies, The Food and Environment Research Agency, FERA, recently completed a badger vaccination project over a 100km² area near Stroud in Gloucestershire.  In a report published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society they concluded,

“In a clinical field study, BCG vaccination of free-living badgers reduced the incidence of positive serological test results by 73.8 per cent. …BCG vaccination of badgers could comprise an important component of a comprehensive programme of measures to control bovine TB in cattle.”

In fact, the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, which has conducted its own trials, estimates that badger vaccination is a viable alternative to culling without the drawbacks, and could be carried out for only £51 per hectare.

Only two diseases have ever been eradicated in the world; smallpox and rinderpest, the latter being a cattle disease. Both were eradicated using vaccination.

What DEFRA should do is as follows:

• stop slaughtering infected cattle immediately
• allow farmers to vaccinate their cattle at their own discretion
• initiate a programme of vaccinating wild badgers

It will still take years but this is the only approach that will ever eradicate bTB from our shores.

Government ministers of all hues often feel obliged to be seen to do something, even when it makes no sense.  The Conservative party moreover has always been the traditional party of the countryside and the farming lobby, so the pressure to do something dramatic is commensurately greater.  But killing badgers will do nothing to eliminate bovine TB, it may even exacerbate the problem and it will do immense damage to our wildlife.  Far from being science led, the decision to cull badgers looks like a purely political one.

Under these circumstances the proposed cull is pointless, barbaric and just plain wrong. Our wildlife should not be treated as a political prop.

I will leave the last word to the Badger Trust which has raised a legal challenge to the cull and which summed up the situation concisely.

“Badger culling, if it comes to pass, will represent a triumph of prejudice over science, a triumph of the feel-good factor over commonsense and a triumph of political expediency at the expense of a gullible industry.”

Crying fowl.

As the bells chimed midnight on December 31^st the law changed right across the EU.  With the adoption of European Union Council Directive 1999/74/EC conventional battery cages for chickens are now banned from the EU and it is illegal to sell battery eggs.

It is still legal to keep hens in cages, but from now on they have to be the new so called Enriched or Colony Cages.  These allow the birds more space and head room and also provide features such as a nesting area, a scratching area and perches for roosting to enrich their lives.

Replacing every battery cage in Europe has been a big project.  Farmers have had 12 years notice in order to comply and in the UK alone the industry calculates that egg producers have spent £400m on converting cages. Nevertheless as the deadline drew near it became clear that many countries would miss the target.  In fact only 13 out of 27 countries were fully compliant by January 1^st.  Across the whole of Europe it seems about 14% of producers have failed to comply with the regulations accounting for some 46 million chickens. In the worst lagging countries, Belgium and Italy, fully one third of hens are still in battery cages.

Understandably the British producers, led by the British Egg Industry Council were increasingly concerned about the apparent unfairness of this situation.  Even though the UK is about 85% self sufficient in eggs, BEIC has called for a ban on imports and in fact began legal proceedings against the British government to force it to take action against other countries in the European institutions.  Compliant producers, they argue, have absorbed huge costs already and there is an increased cost of production associated with the enriched cages.  Foreign farmers who have broken the law, they argue, should not be able to benefit by undercutting British producers.

Their righteous indignation took something of a knock when it emerged last week that the UK was among the delinquents.   According to DEFRA, 30 British farms have failed to meet the deadline.  BEIC estimate 150,000 birds may be affected, DEFRA say 1% of the UK flock, which would be more like 350,000.  Either way, the government says they must either comply or cease production by the end of January and the European Commission says 1% or 30% it’s all the same, the UK will be among the fourteen countries receiving letters outlining likely remedial procedures later this month.

I think British indignation is misplaced.  Now I accept that animal welfare is generally better in the UK than many other parts of Europe and British farmers are as good as anyone at implementing EU regulations.  I also accept that the Enriched cages are an improvement on the traditional battery cage.

The old cages had a minimum statutory height of 40cm.  Birds typically stood on a wire floor about 5 to 10 in a cage, each with a minimum 500 cm² space, about the size of a sheet of A4 paper.  They didn’t have enough room to turn around or to stretch their wings properly.  They lived their whole life indoors in artificially regulated light to maximise laying, in sheds which reeked of ammonia from piled up excrement.  The cages were associated with increased incidence of ‘feather pecking’ where birds literally peck each other to death, and the farmers’ response ‘beak trimming’ where young birds actually have their beaks cut off to prevent pecking.  Cages cause stress, disease, high mortality rates and cannibalism.  Surely anything has to be better than that.

The Enriched cages, great name by the way, increase the headroom to 50 cm.  Each cage can now accommodate 60 to 80 chickens, that’s where the word Colony comes from, with each bird allotted an extra 250 cm², one and a half A4 sheets!  The birds usually stand on Astroturf, not wire, and by having specified laying, perching and scratching places the guano problem is dealt with more effectively.  It’s still not exactly the Hilton is it?

Does any of this matter? I mean these are the creatures who famously continue to run around even if you cut their heads off.  How great exactly is their capacity for suffering?

Well yes it does matter, I am not a vegetarian but I respect the animals that feed me.  I believe any amount of needless suffering is too much.  I also do not want my food to be associated with stinking, torture chambers.  I believe that healthy food comes from healthy animals.  Remember this is the system that has given us eggs containing listeria and salmonella.

Thankfully I am not alone.  About 50% of the shell eggs sold in the UK nowadays are ‘free-range’, where chickens actually get the chance to wander outdoors and walk around in the fresh air.  If you consider that commercial purchasers, hotels, schools, hospitals etc. are more likely to buy on price and therefore to buy cage eggs, I would argue that the majority of eggs bought directly by the public are free-range.

Free-range eggs do cost more.  Producers estimate it costs about 22p to make a free-range egg compared with 11p for a battery egg.  The classic argument is choice; let the consumer decide how much animal welfare they want to pay for.  Well I think that the public has chosen.  It is notoriously hard to influence indirect purchases.  Who knows what kind of eggs go in to a Sarah Lee cake or a Tesco quiche?  But when people buy eggs they buy free-range.  Also, why should the public have the right to choose inhumane living conditions for animals in order to shave a few pennies from the family’s grocery bill? What gives us the right to make chickens pay the price so that we can buy an extra packet of fags or half a pint of beer?

Spot the difference - Free-range chickens

Germany got rid of its battery cages five years ago. This year, as the rest of the EU was switching to enriched cages, Germany moved further ahead to be totally cage- free.  It can be done, it’s what the public prefers and it is the future.  I don’t blame British farmers; they operate in a commercial environment and have to be cost conscious.  It’s up to the regulators to set minimum standards and these should be humane, in line with public attitudes and fit for the current era not the 1950s.  We don’t have to wait for the whole EU to agree on this. As Germany has proved you can chose to unilaterally exceed the minimum standards.

Perhaps when all our chickens are free-range, or as the RSPCA put it in their Freedom Food certification, when “every animal reared for food has a happy, healthy life…with an environment that meets their needs…providing a stimulating environment that enables the animals to exhibit their natural behaviour”, then we might have room to be sanctimonious.

My Favourite Shop

Orford General Store - Nominated for National Village Shop of the Year

The beating heart of any village is the village shop.  In Orford we are privileged to have one of the best.  That’s not just my opinion; The Orford General Store has been shortlisted for the Countryside Alliance’s Village Shop of the Year award.  This week I caught up with the owner, Penny Teale to find out what her formula was.

DSFH: “You took over the Orford village shop a year ago.  But 600 rural shops close in England every year, so my first question has to be, are you mad?”

PT: “I don’t think so.  I gave up a lucrative career in corporate retailing to take on this business.  This isn’t a hobby, it’s a livelihood. You don’t make that kind of decision without doing a huge amount of research and being pretty sure that you can make a go of it.  Many of those failing shops may not have been run very well or with a keen eye on costs and the customer offer, but I realized that it was possible to take the things that supermarkets do well and apply them to a small business.  I used my retail experience to put in solid processes and apply up to date technology.  I try to keep on top of my stock control and my market as Tesco or Sainsburys would, but I am able to combine that with a business that has great local product and personality.”

As if to back this up she starts to spout a range of facts and figures.

“My catchment area is 5 or 6 miles.  People come from 5 villages and those villages contain 2000 people”

DSFH: “But what about that market?  You’ve actually got a number of very different constituencies within a village like this?”

PT: “Three. (She nods her head) There are the local people who rely on the village shop for everyday provisions.  They buy little and often.  They are very price conscious and quite conservative.  They are really important because they are here all year round.  I actually keep a close watch on supermarket prices.  We can’t afford to be too far out of sync.  Even though a trip to Woodbridge or Saxmundham is likely to cost £5 or £6 when you add up the fuel and total cost of running a car, people don’t look at it that way.  Also supermarkets aren’t as cheap as you think.  They use a variety of tricks such as hi-lo pricing.  They put things on the shelf at a high price so they can then discount them later.”

“Then there’s the ‘second homers’ and visitors  or what I call the ‘four and threes’, people who call Orford home but in reality they spend half the week in London.  They are almost the exact opposite.  Price is less important to them but they demand quality and they want to be delighted by the range, local product and high quality veggies.  The third group are die-hard Tesco or Waitrose shoppers, who dip in and out around their weekly shop.

DSFH: “So is there a conflict in serving such different needs?  After all you have to decide what you give shelf space to?”

PT: “Not really.  I use the ‘good, better, best’ rule to all of the ranges.  For instance I re-jigged the wine section.  Now you can buy a bottle of wine for as little as £3, £5, or up to £15 depending on your budget.  Take canned produce like beans; we’ve got Happy Shopper in the ‘good’ range, Heinz in the ‘better’ range and Epicure in the ‘best’, for people who want something different.  So everyone can find something suitable.”

DSFH: “So what are your best sellers?”

PT: “We do sell an awful lot of pies!  Locally made homemade pies just seem to fly off the shelves.  But the Deli section generally does ever so well”

DSFH:  “You touched on it briefly but a village shop in a place like Orford can almost be regarded as a social service as much as a business.  Is that a double edged sword?”

PT: “Not at all.  You are right, we are often the first to notice if an elderly customer doesn’t pop in, and you get some people who just come in for a chat, but that makes us a sort of communications hub.  From a business perspective it’s a privileged position.  Customers do expect you to remember their names though.  Everyone knows who I am, so it can be a real challenge remembering theirs!”

DSFH:  “You carry a lot of local produce. How important is that?”

PT: “Absolutely crucial! As a retailer I want to know the provenance of the food I sell.  If a bag of potatoes were harvested from the field in Leiston yesterday afternoon I can be pretty sure that they will be fresh and the customer will be happy.  But it’s more than that.  I’ve now got over 20 suppliers within a fifteen mile radius (and growing).  30% of my shelf space is allocated to local products.  Being local is part of the brand that differentiates us from the supermarket chains.  But Suffolk is a great food-producing county with some wonderful local products.  As a retailer of course I want to tap in to that.”

DSFH: “So did you find local suppliers were ready and prepared to supply a local, small business?”

PT: “Most of them were very enthusiastic but with some we have had to work together on things like packaging or branding.”

DSFH: “You actually run a portfolio of businesses in the village don’t you?  Is that part of a strategy?”

PT: “Absolutely.  There’s The General Store, The Suffolk Butcher and Penny’s Café.  They are all distinct brands that will allow us to do different things with them.  But it’s also about making Orford into a ‘destination food village’.  After all, we don’t get any passing trade out here.  But the other businesses in Orford: the smokehouses, the bakery, pubs, hotel and the craft shop all contribute to make it somewhere people will consciously come to.  We get customers now who regularly come from a wider catchment area to visit us."

Penny's Cafe - Helping to make Orford into a Destination Food Village

DSFH: “But how much can you really expand the market? Ultimately you are restricted by demographics aren’t you?”

PT: “A lot of people do come in to the area: second homers, day trippers and so on. Trade in a place like Orford is very seasonal, but the thing is to extend the season.  We are working with the Orford Business Association to do just that.  I’ve held ‘tasting events’ for wine and local products and we have a Carol singing planned for the 22^nd of December.  There’s a lot more events planned for next year.”

DSFH:  “So the future of the village shop is bright is it?”

PT: “Well I am ahead of schedule according to my business plan.  Year one was all about getting the basics sorted out, but this year will be about growth: more tastings, expanding the range, building a website.”

DSFH:  “And is Orford a unique location or would your treatment work in other village shops?”

PT:  “The model will work in other locations, if the timing and opportunities come up.  But that’s in the future, Christmas is the immediate focus.”

Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Osborne?

Is there anybody who doesn’t know that we are in the middle of the worst economic recession since the war?  This week UK unemployment reached its highest point in 15 years, inflation is running at 5%, real wages are falling and business confidence is being held down by the crisis in the Eurozone.  Even if all that has somehow passed you by, you could tell something big was happening just by listening to the language of our politicians.  David Cameron in his first leader’s speech as Prime Minister resurrected Lord Kitchener’s call to arms telling his party “Your country needs you”.  George Osborne, The Chancellor of the Exchequer, caught the prevailing mood and revived his own wartime slogan to tell voters “We are all in it together”, conveniently ignoring the fact that some of us are more ‘in it’ than others in the way that only a multi millionaire could.  Even the Green Party has recently called for a ‘new home front’ against climate change, Caroline Lucas, the party’s only MP comparing climate deniers to appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s.

Maybe it really is time to look to the 1940s for parallels in our present circumstances.  After all, the whole of Europe is occupied with the plight of the Euro and in thrall to the Germans. Britain alone, it seems, stands on the outside ready to fight the contagion of Eurozone uncertainty on the beaches.  For the most part, the British public has adopted austerity with the usual blend of sangfroid and chirpy resignation.  There is something in the British character that appears to make the hair shirt almost as comfortable as the ubiquitous shell suit, or in the case of George Osborne, the Barbour jacket and green wellies.

I wonder if all this wartime retrospection is having an impact on the nation’s eating habits yet.  After all the extraordinary fact is that the Second World War was the only time in modern history when the entire population of Britain has enjoyed a healthy balanced diet.  In both WWI and WWII when the UK introduced conscription they found many working class men unfit for military service because of malnourishment.  Almost immediately, as affluence returned in the 1960s, a new disease of obesity began to manifest itself, and is now running at epidemic proportions.  But for a few years in the middle of the twentieth century, government rationing ensured that everyone got a fair share and everyone had the basics for healthy living.

In 1939, (for American readers that’s when WWII started for the rest of us) Britain was completely locked in to the Empire System,  which meant we imported 75% of our food: wheat from Canada; butter, cheese and sheep meat from Australia and New Zealand; sugar from the Caribbean and so on.  Next time you hear someone talking about ‘food security’ think about that.  More than 50% of meat was imported, 70% of cheese and sugar, nearly 80% of fruits and about 70% of cereals and fats.

The Germans knew that the quickest way to force Britain to surrender was literally to starve her into submission.  That is what led to the Battle of the Atlantic where convoys of merchant ships ran the gauntlet of U Boats in order to bring basic food stuffs into the British Isles.

As the blockade began to bite, the government had no choice but to take a firm grip on food distribution and introduce rationing for all.  The minimum weekly allowance of butter per person was only 2oz (57g), cheese was even tighter at 1oz (28g) and sugar was only 8oz (57g).  Eggs were rationed at 1 per week, but only if available.  They usually weren’t.  Meat was rationed by price, but again availability governed consumption more often than the official measure.

The only things that were not rationed at any stage during the war were bread and fresh vegetables.  Ironically bread and potatoes only went on ration after the end of the war, as Britain assumed the additional responsibility for feeding liberated Europe.  In fact as members of the public were urged to ‘Dig for Victory’ the supply of home grown vegetables grew steadily.  The whole country it seems  willingly dug up their lawns and flower beds to grow spuds and leeks.  That hair shirt mentality again!  By 1943 over 1 million tons of vegetables were being produced from gardens and allotments.

The Ministry of Food then set about providing information and recipes to help people make the most of their rations.  Marguerite Patten, who later became a famous food writer, was employed to come up with nourishing recipes which she broadcast on the BBC.  Most famous of all was the vegetable pie which came to be named after the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, but which was in fact created at the Savoy Hotel in London by the head Chef, Francis Latry.

Frederick Marquis,
1st Earl of Woolton

This diet, rich in vegetables, low in meat and fats, was sufficient to “Keep Britain Fighting Fit,” in the words of yet another wartime slogan, and by the end of the war Britain produced almost 80% of its own food.  The figure today by the way, stands at around 60%.

When rich politicians decide to preach to the public, or when they urge people to tighten their belts while standing in front of their chauffeur driven Jaguars, it naturally falls on deaf ears.  The public simply does not believe that they are all in it together while they see bankers receiving huge and unjustifiable bonuses, or MPs fiddling their expenses.  But anyone who is nervously watching inflation erode their savings, or struggling to survive on Job Seekers Allowance could do a lot worse than taking up gardening.  Digging is therapeutic and fresh vegetables are delicious.  You will also find that growing and eating your own vegetables is good for your health, good for your wallet and good for the planet.

Recipe – Lord Woolton’s Pie

Ingredients:

1lb diced potatoes
1lb cauliflower
1lb diced carrots
1lb diced swede
3 spring onions
1 teaspoon vegetable extract
1 tablespoon oatmeal

Salt and pepper to taste
A little chopped parsley

Method:

 Cook everything together with just enough water to cover, stirring often to prevent it sticking to the pan. Let the mixture cool. Spoon into a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Cover with a crust of potatoes or whole meal pastry. Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown. Serve hot with gravy.

Wooltons Pie with potato crust

Notes:  I’m not sure what was meant by ‘vegetable extract’ in the 1940s, but I used Marmite.  Also the original recipe suggests varying the selection of vegetables according to season and availability.  Although I have a long standing love affair with swede we are currently not on talking terms, so I substituted some butternut squash.   I didn’t have spring onions so in the interest of austerity I substituted a small red onion.  I’ve also read comments that the pie could be a bit bland, so I added a chopped leek and used a cheese mash for the crust.  I probably blew my ration for the month!

Verdict:  Using a mashed potato topping made this into a kind of vegetarian shepherd’s pie and it had the same comforting, homely feel.  The taste was evocative of my childhood somehow and I thoroughly enjoyed it, which is just as well because even though I halved the quantities there’s enough for two more main meals.  Quite acceptable as a filling, midweek dinner and economical too.

Moules Marinière

Autumn is well and truly here now.  It’s probably my favourite season of the whole year.  I love the way that it assails all your senses at once.  There’s nothing I like more than walking in the Autumn countryside.  Those dank, dark days where your breath hangs in front of your face and smoke rises vertically from cottage chimneys in the still air.  The only sounds are the doleful cawing of crows in the nearby beeches.   The air heavy with rotting leaves and over ripe fruit still clinging to bare trees.  The whole day seems to be only a precursor to night, with lights burning brightly in distant windows in mid afternoon.

The long period of summer fruitfulness is over, and now is the time to turn from salads and abundant fresh produce to warm nourishing and hearty fare.  Personally I love thick homemade soups and rich slow-cooked casseroles.  How good is it to come home cold and damp from a long walk to the kitchen, warmed by the oven, and the smell of cooking permeating the whole house?

Among the greatest pleasures of the Autumn is the return of new season mussels to the fishmonger.  Mussels are relatively cheap.  I pay £3 for a kilo (£5 for 2kg) which serves two people as a starter, or one person,( me), as a main course.

Thankfully they are also completely green.  Most commercially available mussels are farmed, so they are renewable, and they are reared organically.  Unlike other forms of aquaculture they do not rely on fish meal as food. Mussels are filter feeders; they clean the sea water rather than polluting it.  They are not treated with any artificial chemicals.

If you live anywhere near the sea there’s a good chance that they might be reasonably local too.  Mine come from just up the coast from Blakeney in Norfolk.

Many years ago the first recipe I ever tried with mussels was the French classic Moules Marinière and I loved it so much I have never looked much beyond it.  It makes a quick and delicious lunch or light supper and it could hardly be easier to cook.

Choose small mussels and make sure they are fresh.  Use them on the day of purchase.

Moules Mariniere

Moules Marinière - Recipe

Ingredients

·         1 or 2 kilos of mussels

·         1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

·         2 shallots, finely chopped

·         1 knob of butter

·         a bouquet garni of fresh parsley, thyme and bay leaves

·         1 glass dry white wine

·         120ml/4fl oz double cream

·         coarsely chopped parsley for garnishing,

·         crusty bread, to serve

Method

Begin by cleaning the mussels in the sink under lots of clean fresh water.  Live mussels should close firmly when jostled in the sink.  Discard any that don’t.   Also discard any with broken shells.

Remove any dirt, seaweed or barnacles attached to the shell, and make sure to pull off the beard.  That’s the rough, fibrous appendage that they use to attach themselves to rocks.  Also throw away any that feel particularly heavy.  They are probably just full of mud which will ruin your meal.  Drain them in a colander.

Soften the garlic and shallots in a large pan with the butter and toss the bouquet garni in.

Put the mussels and wine in the pan, turn up the heat and put a lid on the pan.  Steam them in the wine for 3 or 4 minutes only, giving the pan two or three good shakes.

Remove from the heat and take out the bouquet.  Add the wine and chopped parsley.

Ladle into bowls, giving each person plenty of creamy sauce.  Discard any that haven’t opened properly.

Eat immediately with the crusty bread and the rest of the wine