SFT’s Head of Policy and Campaigns – and lead on our small abattoirs work – Megan Perry, explores the decline in people opting to work in skilled labour roles in the food sector, including slaughtering and butchery. From systemic shocks like Brexit and COVID-19 which have affected labour supply and demand, to a lack of funding for training, Megan takes a deeper look at the reasons behind this decline and what can be done to protect the future of the UK’s small abattoirs and butchers.

While many organisations are working to reconnect people with where their food comes from, educating children through farm visits and reviving an interest in food production as a viable career, there is an important part of the food chain that often gets overlooked. For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies. This was the focus of a recent paper by the Sustainable Food Trust and the Abattoir Sector Group presented to Defra’s Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group.

The UK’s food supply chain contributes over £128 billion to the UK economy every year and provides employment for over four million people. The meat processing sector employs around 97,000 people and directly supports 50,000 farmers, with skilled butchers making up 40% of the workforce, according to the British Meat Processors Association.

However, according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), systemic shocks such as Brexit and COVID-19 have affected labour supply and demand. The number of workers going into voluntary redundancy and early retirement doubled in recent years. In 2021, the impact of COVID was clear – there were 953,000 job vacancies in the UK, over half of them in the food and drink sector.

Estimates suggest that one in four food and drink industry workers are due to retire within the next 10 years, which amounts to over one million people leaving the industry. The BMPA has highlighted that the rise in worker losses has mainly affected skilled worker roles such as veterinarians and butchers. These roles are also some of the hardest to recruit and training is extensive and takes a long time.

Staff shortages have been a concern for some abattoirs, disrupting operational capacity and contributing to closures. National Craft Butchers’ (NCB) 2023 survey found that 20% of respondents had changed their business hours in the previous 12 months, with 22% pointing to staffing issues. For those looking to set up new abattoirs, the availability of staff can be a concern.

The average age of small abattoir operators is between 60-70. The NCB survey found that 56% of respondents do not have a succession plan, yet 50% were aged 56 or above and 26% plan to retire in the next five years.

Despite a clear need for workers in the sector, since 2019 only 22 abattoir apprentices completed their apprenticeship – that works out at about five per year, an all-time low. Only 33% of respondents to the NCB survey were currently employing an apprentice, although 82% said they would welcome one.

This problem is not helped by lack of funding, with Level 2 Butchery apprenticeships receiving £10k funding each, but only £6k available to the equivalent level in slaughtering apprenticeships. This makes it economically unviable for training providers, particularly if they must travel to remote rural abattoirs. Further, there is now only one training provider in the whole of the UK for smaller abattoirs.

“For sustainable livestock farming and local meat production to be viable, we need a network of abattoirs and butchers. However, the decline in people opting to work in the local meat sector and the loss of heritage and artisan skills such as butchery, has widespread implications for food security, sustainability and rural economies.”

There are many reasons why people are not choosing to go into a career in the slaughtering and butchery sector, not least because it can have a negative public image and gets little acknowledgement despite being an incredibly important and skilled role.

However, the decline of small abattoirs due to rising costs and a challenging regulatory environment means people are reluctant to begin a career in the sector, and family businesses are not being handed down. When we surveyed small abattoirs in Wales recently, one owner told us he had wanted to pass the business on to his son, but he felt it was not viable and his son had gone to work elsewhere.

There is also a disconnect between education, careers advice and staffing needs. With the Food Technology A-Level scrapped in 2016, there has been a lack of emphasis on food supply chain careers and training.

In our aforementioned paper on the skilled labour shortage, we reported recent conversations between the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) and a small group of young people under the age of 22 who are at the beginning of their further education and career paths. They highlighted how little the food sector is regarded as a viable ‘job for life’, despite living in an area dominated by food manufacturers, including two local butchers. They said the food industry was never presented as a possible career path at school. There was also an attitude that butchery was male-dominated.

However, some progress is being made. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) are now looking to review the slaughtering apprenticeship and are positively engaging with the sector to get their ideas and input.

Some members of the Abattoir Sector Group are also holding conversations with educational institutions and experts to explore new ideas for connecting young people with the full range of career options. This could include better connections between agricultural colleges and the processing part of the supply chain, with livestock farmers also being able to train in butchery or slaughtering, if this was something they were interested in.

Ultimately, a resilient small abattoir network is essential for the future of local meat production. And it’s the unsung heroes who work in abattoirs that are providing the vital services that so many farmers, retailers, restaurants and countless other businesses benefit from.

For more information, please see our paper.

The Sustainable Food Trust is working to connect people with the story behind their food, including promoting careers in food and farming, through our newly launched Beacon Farms Network. We are also working as part of The Agroecology Learning Collective to signpost agroecological learning opportunities (including training and apprenticeships) and support the development of new courses which fill gaps in current training provision.

We talk about the value of sustainably-sourced local meat a lot, but what about the value of by-products? Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin but are now paying significant money to have by-products taken away. Megan Perry, our Head of Policy & Campaigns, explains how the value of hides continues to decrease while the costs of processing have increased, and what can be done to resurrect this dwindling sector.

While the importance of smaller abattoirs has begun to be recognised for their essential role in producing local meat, food security and high animal welfare, what happens to the by-products in such a system is little talked about. Rendering, tanning and incinerating are not generally hot topics of conversation! Yet the world of animal by-products (ABP) has a direct bearing on the local meat supply chain.

The Sustainable Food Trust recently put together a paper for the Defra Small Abattoir Task and Finish Group, co-chaired by the Abattoir Sector Group of which the SFT is a founding member. This paper outlined the stark reality of smaller abattoirs and how costs associated with ABP are impacting their viability. Animal by-products are the materials from animals that are not intended for human consumption and include products such as bones, skin, hooves, horns and blood, as well as whole carcases of animals that cannot be processed for humans. Products are categorised according to risk, and this determines what they can be used for. Some uses include rendering to form protein for animal feed, or anaerobic digestion to produce biogas.

Traditionally, the fifth quarter was a valuable source of income to the abattoir, often providing the ‘operating’ profit for the business. Abattoirs once received £45 per hide and £6.50 per lamb skin, which was enough to cover the slaughter cost. This has now turned on its head and abattoirs pay significant amounts to have ABP taken away, including hides and skins.

Most smaller abattoirs have their ABP collected and processed by rendering companies. Unlike larger abattoirs which have economies of scale, the amount of ABP from a smaller abattoir is relatively small and the abattoir is often located in a rural or remote area, and with the significant decline of other smaller abattoirs there is little chance of collectors visiting multiple operators in one go. This results in collectors and renderers levying high charges and leads smaller abattoirs to ‘bulk up’ their ABP into one container, meaning they are reluctant or unable to begin separating out the ABP for further processing themselves. The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.

Global markets and events have a major impact on the value of ABP. For example, prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia was one of the biggest importers of UK sheepskins. There are also major export challenges due to Brexit, where labelled hides were once sent to Europe on a trailer, there is now 40 pages of documentation to be completed.

Stringent regulation following the BSE outbreak led to the decline of many traditional uses of by-products. The categorisation of ABP and separate infrastructures for processing by category contributed to consolidation of the processing sector. We have been campaigning for the UK Government to apply to the World Organisation for Animal Health for negligible BSE risk status (rather than our current controlled risk status) and we are grateful that this is now being taken forward.

“The consolidation of the ABP processing industry has left small abattoirs with little or no choice as to which companies they use and therefore they must accept whatever the collector charges. This can amount to thousands of pounds per month and is often flagged as one of the mounting costs contributing to small abattoir closures.”

Potential new due diligence regulation, the Forest Risk Commodity Regulation (FRCR), could also have an impact in future as it will prohibit larger companies with a global turnover of more than £50m from using agricultural commodities that have not been produced in line with local laws. Companies will have to provide traceability and evidence that commodities have not been produced on deforested land. This will apply to both beef and leather products.

Reviving local and sustainable leather

While ABP processing represents an entire sector in itself, the production of leather is worth a special focus. The current situation has been described as ‘dire’ by those working in the hide sector. It is believed there were around 4,000 tanneries in the UK in the early 1900s but the sector collapsed in the 1980s with the rise of China and India providing cheap manufacturing and supply chains, coupled with rising costs of more stringent effluent regulations in the UK. By 1983 there were 125 tanneries and by 2015 there were 23. Today, just a small handful of remaining facilities have the capability to process raw hides and skins from the start, and a small number of additional facilities work with material that is already part-processed.

The value of hides has collapsed even further in recent months while the costs of processing (including salt, energy and transport) have gone up. Hides are a global commodity and UK hides currently must compete on a global market. There is a glut in hides globally due to the rise in plastic and other synthetic materials and perhaps also due to an overproduction of cattle, globally, through industrial farming systems. Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.

There is also a huge disconnect between the demands on the fashion industry for sustainability and traceability, and how these are reflected in the leather supply chain. For most leather producers or users, it is not currently possible to trace leather back to the farm of origin or to know how the animal has been reared, and yet the desire for that information is growing.

British Pasture Leather have been working to address this issue since 2021, taking hides from certified Pasture for Life farms to create a supply of traceable and sustainable leather, marketed to designers and brands of leather goods. They also recently launched their ‘Service for Farmers’, offering to get hides vegetable tanned (which involves using natural vegetable tannins to alter the protein structure of the hide, rather than chrome tanning which is seen as environmentally damaging) and returned to those same farms as supple, fully grain quality leather, suitable for producing a range of products from upholstery to footwear. Adding value in this way could be an important part of livestock farm viability in future.

However, what is missing is the capacity to produce this leather in the UK at a volume and cost that would result in a commercially viable price.

“Over half of British hides and nearly all sheepskins are exported or thrown away. Even large abattoirs are paying to have hides taken away as waste, while small abattoirs are spending thousands of pounds purchasing hide shredders so they can be put into landfill.”

One of the main challenges British Pasture Leather is facing, is the bottleneck caused by diminished tanning capacity – the business relies on one tannery in the UK that can process their hides. The capacity of that facility is limited, which also makes the production cost high.

Improving local infrastructure is therefore essential to scaling up the sector. Alongside British Pasture Leather, a small vanguard of people are now at the leading edge of the revival of small-scale leather production, including Billy Tannery, who process goat and deer skins, and Cotmarsh Tannery which has been awarded funding to establish a micro tannery and teaching facility. But further identifying where there is missing infrastructure, particularly for the collection and storage of hides along with tanning capacity, is urgently needed. And British Pasture Leather feels that collaboration to use local hides in local leather production needs to be established to successfully realise this vision.

Alongside this, the founders of British Pasture Leather say that a mentality change is needed and that a vision for leather has to be married to agriculture and viewed from farm to finished material. The origin and production of leather must be better understood and appreciated. Good quality, sustainably sourced and traceable leather with a story, can advance a message about how we want to farm. Leather is emblematic of the agricultural system and landscape from which it came.

With major challenges facing both smaller abattoirs and livestock farmers, anything we can do to add value, improve viability and create a sustainable, local product will be welcomed. Defra have been willing to explore this issue and help identify solutions and we look forward to discussing this further through the Abattoir Sector Group in the coming months.

The introduction by the Danish government of a cow carbon tax, announced last week, is in my opinion a deeply misguided decision.

I’m sure it was well intentioned, but the truth is that introducing this tax may make it even more difficult for farming to move from being part of the problem (which it currently absolutely is) to being part of the solution.

Furthermore, and this is a controversial statement if ever there was one, it is my contention that beef, lamb or dairy products from grass-fed animals managed in a holistic grazing system are amongst the most sustainable foods we can eat.

This proposition runs counter to the overwhelming consensus in the scientific, research, policy, NGO, and medical establishment that livestock, in general, and ruminants, in particular, are part of the problem in terms of climate. However, before you dismiss me as a heretic, I’ll try and set out the arguments which justify this statement.

Let me start by defending the undoubtedly good intentions of the policymakers in the Danish government. They are simply following the lead of many reports and institutions who have been saying for at least a couple of decades now that ruminant animals (cows and sheep) are part of the problem in terms of climate change because they emit methane.

This is correct, but what they don’t factor in is the inter-relationship between the emissions from those same grazing animals and the pastures they eat, which, if correctly managed, can be a major source of carbon sequestration.

For evidence, look no further than the corn-belt in the USA, as it is now known, whose soil fertility was built (in some cases several metres of it) by an interaction between millions of bison and grasslands.

Furthermore, the current way by which we calculate the global warming effect of methane, termed GWP100, does a poor job of measuring its actual warming impact. A new and improved metric, termed GWP*, has been developed in response, and this shows that the carbon footprint of herds or flocks with stable or declining methane emissions have been significantly overestimated.

I suggested at the beginning of this article that we should not be too hard on the policy makers because they are simply misinformed. What they now need to do is to differentiate between the animals that are part of the problem – intensively farmed, mainly grain-fed, animals which never get out to grass – and those animals that are not only part of the solution, but are actually central to the farming and food systems transition that all farmers will need to undergo if we are to avoid irreversible climate change.

Let me conclude by declaring an interest. I have been lucky enough to have stewardship over a 300-acre dairy farm in West Wales for over 50 years during which time we have been producing milk, cheese, meat and vegetables – all without the use of any chemical fertilisers, doing our best to farm in harmony with nature.

Like many farmers, we haven’t been keeping robust soil carbon records but from analysis over the last 10 or 15 years there is strong evidence to suggest that we are actually carbon negative, if you balance the carbon sequestration which we have achieved in our soils, hedgerows and grassland against the methane, diesel, electricity, and other inputs that are part of the problem.

So, if you are one of the many millions of people that have been persuaded to move to a plant-based diet, please do think twice and consider purchasing meat and dairy products from grass-fed (or mainly grass-fed) cattle and sheep. By doing so you will be actively enabling the much-needed transition towards more sustainable food and farming systems.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high-welfare, sustainably produced meat. Marianne finishes her tour in North Wales, with a visit to Master Butcher, Ieuan Edwards, who runs a meat processing business with an award-winning shop and deli in the town of Conwy.

Ieuan Edwards is the youngest of three brothers who grew up on the family farm in the Conwy Valley in North Wales. Ieuan was 13-years-old when his father told him the farm wasn’t big enough for three boys and he would have to go into another business. “I was so relieved,” says Edwards, “I had no interest in farming – my Dad knew me well and made the right call. Even at that age, I loved buying and selling things, from bikes to fishing rods.”

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. David Gigli has made his shop a destination – it’s a butcher’s with a bistro serving breakfast and lunch (and occasionally dinner), where you can hear a talk on how to barbecue or take course on butchery, putting ‘diversification’ centre stage.

A perfectly cooked, deep green stem of purple sprouting broccoli tops the Golden Cleaver award winning ox cheek on mash. The barista style espresso machine gleams behind the counter. A doorway in the open brick wall allows customers a glimpse into the adjacent butcher’s shop with its polished white tiles, and a simple but elegant backlit sign tells you where you are: this is Gigli’s, a butcher’s, bistro and coffeeshop in Lytham St Annes, just south of Blackpool.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. Farmer, Will Simkin, has developed an extensive farm shop with a tearoom and restaurant, selling his own pork and beef, along with vegetables produced on the farm.

On a rainy day in May, Wolverhampton may not present its prettiest side, but to meet farmer Will Simkin, we need to get a few miles out of the city. Essington Farm is situated amidst beautiful countryside with cattle and sheep grazing or resting under gnarled oak trees and well-maintained hedges along the narrow roads. If it weren’t for the signposts, first time visitors to the farm shop and butchers might well miss the entrance.

The shop is housed in a modern, one-storey building. Next to the entrance is an eye-catching display of bedding plants which are grown in one of the farm’s greenhouses. The farm’s tearoom and restaurant beckon, but we head straight for the shop – a beautiful, well-lit space with a wide choice of fruit and vegetables at the centre and two long deli and meat counters along the walls. Several butchers are serving the customers needing cooking advice, requesting special cuts or wanting to place an order. But most shoppers simply choose from the array of packed meats, sausages, burger patties and ready to cook items on the refrigerated shelves or are just here to pick up some readily packed pigs’ trotters or liver.

It’s not unusual for a farm shop to sell meat, but why did Simkin decide to open a ‘state-of-the-art’ butcher shop, I ask. “Because we already had the pigs,” says Simkin, “it was simply a logical next step.”

The farm was founded by Simkin’s great-great-grandfather in 1892, which makes Will Simkin a fifth-generation farmer. From the age of 14, he looked after a small group of pigs. There were always beef cattle, too, but Simkin liked working with the pigs. “They are friendly in nature, they are really clever and I found working with them rewarding,” he says.

After graduating from school, Simkin studied at Harper Adams University. He always knew that eventually he would return to Essington Farm, but first he wanted to see a bit more of the world. A gap year of just travelling didn’t feel right, so he took a job on a palm oil plantation in Papua New Guinea. In 2005, aged 23, he returned to the farm. His parents had opened a farm shop and restaurant in 1990 to directly market the fruit and vegetables the farm produced, and Simkin felt that adding a butchery would make financial sense.

With roughly 230 acres, the farm is relatively small, says Simkin, but “with pigs you can still work at scale, have a viable business and provide excellent animal welfare”. There are 70 Landrace and Duroc breeding sows which are crossed with Large White boars. The animals are kept in an extensive, outdoor system, which Simkin was happy to show us.

The large pasture is securely fenced and split into individual paddocks separated by electric fencing. The sows live in groups of six; only sows about to farrow (give birth) are moved to a ‘single occupancy’ paddock. Individual huts provide shelter and there is plenty of space to explore, soil to root through and mud to wallow in. The piglets can move freely under the electric fences. Unlike piglets brought up in confinement which are weaned at four weeks or even earlier, these pigs stay with their mums for about eight weeks until they are basically teenagers, and their mums are naturally ready to see them go. As we arrive, we are greeted by a ‘gang’ of about 10 (roughly two-month-old) piglets ‘patrolling’ near the gate; another group is sheltering under a tree. A younger piglet on a solitary excursion can’t quite remember who his mum is. He finds out quickly when he tries to suckle – sows don’t react kindly to kids from another litter wanting to feed.

To the side of the paddock are several large tents, each home to a group of 20 male or female weaned pigs. The canvas covers a spacious area with deep straw bedding, and towards the back is a good sized ‘run’ with one corner designated by the inhabitants as the ‘toilet’ – pigs are very clean and don’t soil their resting and feeding area. Because the animals have space to play and root, Simkin never has to dock the tails or treat with antibiotics, which is often necessary when piglets are weaned very early.

The pigs are slaughtered when they are between five and six months old. Every Thursday, a group of 20 to 25 is transported in a trailer with thick straw bedding to a small abattoir which is just over six miles away. They are slaughtered the same day and don’t have to spend a stressful night in an unfamiliar environment in close proximity to animals they don’t know. “I am really grateful that we have this small abattoir so close by, without it we couldn’t maintain a high welfare standard right to the end.”

Back at the shop, Simkin shows us the state-of-the-art butchery and cold storage space housed in a new purpose-built unit on the far side of the parking lot. Simkin has good butcher skills, but no formal training and he is far too busy with the many managerial tasks to regularly work in the butchery. At present, Essington Farm employs eight butchers. The abattoir returns whole sides of pig and beef to the farm, as well as livers and kidneys. The butchers cut and portion the meat, cure bacon, prepare sausages, burger patties and other products. Most of it is done in the butchery, but the shop has a bakery and a large kitchen, one side caters for the restaurant, the other processing food for the shop. “In 2016, we invested in new buildings and new equipment, after nearly 30 years the original farm shop looked quite tired,” says Simkin.

The floor space of the shop is now much larger. “We are right at the urban fringe here, many people come to do a regular weekly shop and we now have the space to provide for that. The tearoom is not the main attraction.” Everything the farm grows and produces is sold through the shop, all other items are sourced as locally as possible. Outside of the shop sits a trailer with an automated milk dispenser – the milk comes from a dairy just a mile up the road. “My father calls the shop the ‘one link food chain’.”

Will Simkin’s wife, Penny, drops by. “We have to make sure we don’t do too much,” she says. Initially, 34 different fruit and vegetables were grown on the farm; now the focus is on strawberries and other berries, plums and winter veg. With her background in finance and HR, she recruits staff and sorts out the rota – not an easy task with 70 full and part time workers and casual labour in the peak seasons.

Pork accounts for 40% of the meat sales: pig cheeks, livers, kidneys and even pig tails are in high demand, the latter mostly with customers of Chinese heritage. Pig brains on toast, however, is a Black Country speciality – one Will Simkin, personally, is not too keen on.

On average, around 3,000 customers come to the shop every week. How does Simkin see the future of the business? “We don’t want to grow massively and supply to supermarkets or the catering industry. We want to continue to provide quality, value and service,” says Simkin. What he would like to do is expand the beef herd. The farm is small and the available pasture is enough for 35 cow-and-calf pairs and youngstock. But in a purely grass-based systems, the animals take two years to reach their slaughter weight. The demand for beef at the shop is much higher and Simkin has to buy meat in. “It would be great if we could supply all the beef from our farm,” says Simkin. But apart from the money needed, it’s near impossible to buy or even just rent pastures being so close to an urban centre. For the time being the herd expansion will remain a dream.

 

With thanks to National Craft Butchers for helping us to develop this series. To find out more, visit NationalCraftButchers.co.uk.

Photos by @M.Kunz.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. Here, we travel to Ipswich where George Debman has followed on from his father in a traditional butchers buying local meat from local farmers.

George Debman has every intention to bid. A subtle nod, a slight raising of an eyebrow, a thumb discretely flicked up or down is all it takes at a livestock auction; visitors who don’t want to buy, better keep still. Debman owns a traditional butcher shop in Ipswich and comes to the Colchester livestock market every Tuesday to buy lambs and cattle.

When we arrive, the auction is already under way. Around 700 sheep, two to eight to a pen, are patiently waiting. Greeting farmers, fellow buyers and market staff, Debman makes his way to the back of the sales barn to inspect the lambs and decide which ones he may want to bid for. He gets into some of the pens to feel the sides of the lambs with both hands – their heavy wool coats may hide a skinny body or a thick layer of fat rather than muscle. Debman wants to buy heavy lambs. The animals will be slaughtered at a small, family run abattoir close by at a cost of £20 per head, and he wants to make sure that he isn’t just paying for a lot of skin and bones.

Debman’s father bought the shop in East Ipswich in 1963. At the end of May, the Debmans will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the business with the local community, including a bash in the pub across the road.

Debman senior began buying animals at the market when he realised that it was considerably cheaper than buying from a wholesaler. George Debman continued the tradition, not just because of the savings he can make. “I want to know where the meat I eat comes from, I want to know how the animals were raised,” he says. The farmers he buys from are local and he has known them for many years. These days, as more and more livestock markets are closing down, farmers bring their animals to Colchester from as far away as Leicestershire.

The auctioneer has moved to the lambs that Debman is interested in buying. He conducts the auction from a board that runs above the back of the rows of pens. He announces the number of animals in the lot, their weight, followed by a rapid-fire string of numbers – the bidding is under way. A few minutes later, Debman smiles as a market assistant sprays the letters G and D on the backs of four lambs. He got the ones he wanted and at an acceptable price.

Time to grab a quick cup of tea at the market café before Debman takes a closer look at the cattle. Today, there will be about 50 animals for sale. Some farmers have delivered a single bull, others want to sell several animals, both bullocks and heifers. Debman is looking for one animal only, no older than 19 months – older animals have heavier bones and therefore the bone-to-meat ratio can be quite bad. “This time of year, I am not concerned with the hind quarters, that’s where the roasting joints are and what people want in winter. In summer, we can only use it for mince. Right now, the money is in ribs and steaks,” he explains. On the back of each animal is a sticker with a number which corresponds to the listing provided by the market, it includes the age of the animal, its breed and gender.

Half an hour later, the auction starts. One by one the animals are walked across a floor scale into the small, round sales ring. The weight shows up on a digital display on the wall.  Debman successfully bids for the animal he picked out in the pen, a Limousin bullock, and gets it for a good price. Before we leave he talks to James Byford, one of the owners of the abattoir where the lambs and the bullock will be slaughtered. Once the market closes, Byford will load them onto a trailer and take them to the abattoir where they will be inspected, watered and then spend the night in a pen with fresh straw bedding. “We’ve been working together for decades,” says Debman, “I know that the Byfords will take good care of the animals and they won’t be stressed, I can tell as much from the quality of the meat.” The lambs will be slaughtered the following day and delivered to the shop on Thursday. The beef quarters will mature in the chiller at the abattoir first, before being delivered to the shop.

On the way back to Ipswich, Debman points out some landmarks. On the outskirts of the city, developers have built several large shopping centres, easily accessible from the ring road. “The town centre is now almost deserted,” says Debman. There used to be a lot of factories and several flour mills, but all of them have closed down and the area is now one of the most deprived in the UK. The shopfront is decked out with Union Jacks, a bright, cheerful sight amidst the otherwise dull surroundings. Inside, special offers are listed on a blackboard. A laminated sign on the counter reminds customers that the Christmas Club is open year-round. “It’s like a savings club. From January onwards, customers pay in as much as they want and can afford and at Christmas, they will be able to get their money’s worth in turkey, ham, a big chicken or a hamper,” explains Debman’s wife Carol who helped out in the shop while her husband was at the market. Even before the cost of living crisis many people in the neighbourhood struggled financially. The Debmans therefore offer meat packs costing from £10 to £30, containing diced pork and beef, mince and sausages. There are also breakfast packs with eggs, bacon, sausages and black pudding. “We want people to be able to afford some meat. And we sell them whatever quantities they need. Some older customers will ask for one egg, one rasher of bacon and one sausage, and of course we sell that to them.”

Recently, Debman did a customer survey and found that 40% live locally while 60% travel up to 25 miles to buy at his shop. Many of his customers come from Eastern Europe: Romania, Poland and Lithuania. “They come to buy offal, hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, pig and ox tongues, even pig stomachs, it sells out really fast.” A couple, originally from Hong Kong, comes in regularly to buy the fat end of the belly pork, sliced very thinly. “We can do that for them,” says Debman who describes himself as a very traditional butcher. Traditional butchery is also what he teaches Annie, his apprentice. If she wants to do ‘fancy’ cuts such as flat iron steaks or prepare ready meals, she’ll have to pick that skill up somewhere else, he says.

Annie Jones started helping out in the shop on Saturdays when she was still at school. She did A-levels in French, geography and politics, but she was certain that she didn’t want to go to university. “I learn best through doing,” she says. After 14 months of being an apprentice she still feels she made the right career choice and owning her own butcher shop one day would be a dream come true.

Debman, too, knew from a young age that he wanted to become a butcher. He trained at Smithfield College and finished top of his class. When his father retired aged 65, Debman took over the family business. His father passed away just a few months later. “It still makes me sad that he did not see me finish my first year of running the shop on my own,” says Debman. For the past two years he has been president of the NCB, the National Craft Butchers trade association. “My dad would be so proud of what I achieved, travelling around the country, speaking at all these events.” To him, getting more young people to come into the trade and fighting for the survival of small abattoirs are the most important tasks for the NCB. Ideally, Debman would like every craft butcher to become a member. “Collectively we are so much stronger. We have the best cattle in the world, I want us to continue working with farmers to make sure it stays that way.”

Debman is 68 now and he definitely wants to retire when he turns 70. Will he find a buyer for the business? The worst-case scenario would be for him to have to close the shop and sell off the equipment to the highest bidder. But that’s a discussion for another day. Tonight, he has just one thing on his mind: Ipswich Town is playing and he and his wife will be in the stadium, cheering their team on.

 

With thanks to National Craft Butchers for helping us to develop this series. To find out more, visit NationalCraftButchers.co.uk.

Photos by @M.Kunz.

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high welfare, sustainably produced meat. Here, we travel to the West Midlands to meet National Craft Butcher, Robert Jones, who is proud to be continuing a 140-year legacy.

A sepia-coloured photo shows three butchers and a very young apprentice, all in long white aprons, standing in front of rows of beef carcasses hanging from the ceiling. Before them, spelt out in sawdust is the name of the butcher and founder, G.A. Smith.

Robert Jones shows me the picture reproduced in a small brochure in 1985, commemorating ‘Walter Smith – Family Butcher for 100 Years’. Walter Smith really expanded the business, says Jones. “For a long time, the West Midlands had the highest concentration of butcher shops in the UK because of the heavy industry.” We sit in the tiny office behind the company’s butcher’s shop in Litchfield. It is an old-fashioned high street butchers with chalk boards on the pavement outside announcing the specials, and an awning to keep the sun away from the beautifully decorated meat display in the shop window: roasts and cuts of meat, and as a centre piece, chicken breasts arranged in the shape of a flower.

Today, Walter Smith Fine Foods runs 12 outlets, some in and around Birmingham, the others scattered across the Midlands and south England.

Born in 1964, Jones has been working for the company since he was a teenager. He comes from Shelfield, a small community between Walsall and Litchfield. He was four when his father, a grocer, suddenly died. He grew up in his grandparents’ house with his mother and older sister. “I was a troublesome boy,” he says, “I did not do well in school; my mother was very academic, she always thought I was lazy.” He was already in his 40s when he was finally diagnosed with Irlen syndrome. It’s hereditary and his son also has the condition which was picked up during a routine screening at school: light sensitivity, and problems with reading, attention span and concentration are among the typical symptoms. Wearing coloured glasses helped to focus better. “Before, my thoughts were going off in several different directions at once,” he says.

Sitting still in a classroom just didn’t work. With the help of an understanding truant officer, he was allowed to skip most of his last year at school and instead he started helping out at the Walter Smith butchers where his brother-in-law was working. He still remembers his first week’s pay check of £14 and the freedom it provided to buy a Stranglers’ LP or even a new pair of Levi’s. But it wasn’t just about earning some money, from day one, he was fascinated by the work the butchers did: “I was seeing a whole carcass come in through the backdoor, and happy customers leaving with sausages, bacon and roasts through the front door.”

Jones joined when the business was still in its heyday: there were 40 Walter Smith outlets, a freezer centre, a pie factory, and a factory to cure bacon and prepare cuts. The company was known for running its own butcher training programme. He was one of about 30 apprentices who attended the company’s own butcher school in Birmingham for a minimum of one day a week. “We were taken to a live mart to buy cattle, we went to an abattoir to watch slaughter. The next day we had to evaluate the carcasses. The lesson was: the cheapest cattle you can buy, will turn out to be the most expensive because it gives you the poorest yield,” says Jones.

It took at least three years to become a qualified butcher, says Jones, and for those with ambition and talent there was a career path to become head butcher, assistant manager, and finally area manager.

Jones was 27 when he became the manager of one of the smaller shops. By then the decline of the industry was well under way. Butchers were not only closing because they could not compete with supermarkets, in the Midlands, the heavy industry sector was deep in crisis. “As the factories closed we lost customers,” says Jones. “We gave up two of our highest grossing shops, one was next to the Rover plant, the other in Nottingham, close to a coal mine.” For some years, Walter Smith outlets in shopping centres did well, but the rents kept increasing. “There came a point when it cost you £2,000 a week to just open the door of the shop, and that sum covered only rent and business rates, not wages, water and electricity.”

As area manager and later one of the Walter Smith directors, Jones knew that things had to change and change fast. The West Midlands still has pockets of wealth, he says, but the customers there don’t tend to buy at traditional butchers. “We need to be where the customers are,” he concluded. Of the 12 outlets Walter Smith Fine Foods operates today, only two are traditional high street butcher shops, the others are integrated into garden centres. Wait, what?

“Garden centres are open seven days a week, they have a big car park, and the customers have disposable incomes,” says Jones. During the week, the customers are mostly retirees. They buy plants and then stop for a cup of tea and a sandwich, but the busiest days are Saturday and Sunday, when whole families come. All 10 garden centres with Walter Smith Fine Foods, have a partnership with Waitrose, which supplies everything except meat products. With a café, a play area for children and convenient options for food shopping, the garden centres become good venues to spend the better part of a day, says Jones.

The produce and products on offer at the Walter Smith garden centre shops are exactly the same as you would find in a traditional high street butchers, and they are prepared in-house, and “Eighty percent of what we sell, including cured bacon and sausages, is made from carcasses on site”.

Jones spends much of the week travelling between the different shops, advising, observing and training. And he buys the meat needed in any given week from a wholesaler who still runs an abattoir. The demand depends on the location. “Each shop has to stock what customers there want,” he says. That means having a choice between Holcomb Hall beef or lamb from the Litchfield Estate – and cheaper cuts. Jones still remembers what it was like growing up in a single parent family where money was always tight. “There have to be options for people with less money.”

Value for money also means making the best use of every carcass, and for Jones that continues to be one of the best parts of the job. He honed his skills at butcher competitions. “The butchers get a carcass, a lamb, or a quarter of beef and a side of pig, and within a given time, they have to butcher it and present the meat ready to cook.” Jones won his first competition when he was just 21. To showcase what can be done with two lamb carcasses he picked a ‘Welsh versus Chinese dragon’ theme, presenting the meat for a variety of dishes beneath two dragon cut-outs respectively on green and red silk. Creativity and quick lateral thinking have always been his strength. At the time, he didn’t know that he had Irlen syndrome, but today he reckons that his thoughts “going off in several directions at once” may help him to make different mental connections and quickly come up with new and sometimes interesting ideas.

Presentation matters, he says, it’s a form of communication with the customer. He encourages sales staff and butchers to take pride in how meats, sausages and pies are displayed – the Litchfield shop attests to that.

The job of butchers is changing, says Jones. Actual butchery is just part of what they do, culinary skills, management and people skills are becoming as important. “We need to do something different” is Jones motto. The produce has to be seasonal – meat for braising and stews in winter, a good selection of marinated meats and sausages for grilling in summer. “What do you think we could offer for Mothering Sunday?” he asks the sales staff as he inspects the display.

Product development is another part of the job Jones really enjoys. “In future we will have to produce more oven-ready products,” he says. “The new generation of consumers is time poor. They want fresh food, but it needs to be ready within a short time and without much effort. It must feel as if you’ve cooked, though you actually haven’t.” Apart from pies, he and his team have developed various marinated, ready to grill meats. They think about adding vegetables to make it into a complete ready meal, but fresh instead of frozen, and available not in a supermarket cooler but at the butchers. Jones is experimenting with ‘young flavours’ such as meat in peri-peri sauce – the Moroccan lamb sausages with raisins are already a success. Chicken with smoked gammon, garlic and chili and chicken chorizo pie might be next.

As tastes and consumer habits change, butchers have to do things differently, too. Since the company was founded in 1885, the business has had to fundamentally change many times, says Jones, who sees himself as a caretaker for a period of time in the company’s over 140-year history. He hopes his legacy will be to have set the Walter Smith chain of butchers onto a path to a sustainable future.

With thanks to National Craft Butchers for helping us to develop this series. To find out more, visit NationalCraftButchers.co.uk.

 

Photos by @M.Kunz

In our series of butcher profiles, food and farming writer, Marianne Landzettel, meets butchers from across the UK who have built their business around high-welfare, sustainably produced meat. Here, we travel to Bromley to meet Richard Douglas, a member of National Craft Butchers, and owner of ‘Carnivore’ and ‘Herbivore’, who shares his path from paper delivery boy to renowned craft butcher.

He can’t recall the date or even what time of year it was. He only remembers walking down a seemingly endless hospital corridor, together with his wife and a team of five doctors. Once they reached his office, the consultant finally gave them the news – “your son has a brain tumour”.

“Your world is gone in an instant,” says Richard Douglas. Wearing a dark blue apron, his glasses pushed up on his forehead, he stands behind the counter of his butcher shop in Bromley and tells us about his now 16-year-old son Jake. And how, if it hadn’t been for Jake, he probably would never have opened his own shops – not the one in Sidcup, which will be 10 years old in September, nor this one in Bromley, which he took on five years ago.

Jake was three and a half when he started losing his balance and complaining about headaches. “He put his hands on his head and just shouted, ‘it hurts, it hurts’.” It took two months of visits to different doctors and a 12-week wait for an MRI, until they finally got the diagnosis. “It was exactly a week after my wife found out she was pregnant with our daughter Eve,” says Douglas. What followed were harrowing and desperate months: Jake had to undergo several surgeries until the neurosurgeons decided that his best chance was a newly developed treatment available only in Florida. Richard Douglas quit his job and took his family to the US for Jake’s three-month-long treatment.

At the time, Douglas was the manager at M. Moen & Sons in Clapham, south London, a well-known craft butcher’s shop. Among its customers were celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gary Rhodes. “They came for the quality we offered, and they knew that they could get everything they wanted – from ox cheeks to pig’s trotters and marrow bones,” says Douglas. “We often provided the meat for photo shoots for cookery books and for TV shows.”

Jake’s treatment in Florida was successful and upon the family’s return from the US, he continued to improve. Richard Douglas needed to get back to work to provide for his family. For several months, the then 39-year-old looked for a job suitable for a butcher with his qualification, training and experience, but none were even remotely appropriate. The family still lived in Sidcup, so when a nearby shop became vacant he decided to open his own butchery. He named it ‘Carnivore’.

Douglas grew up in Forest Hill in south London, but he does not come from a family of butchers. The introduction to butchery came through his older brother, who got talking to the local butcher while doing his paper round. The butcher offered him work on a Saturday, helping out, cleaning and serving customers. Richard took over the paper round, and when his brother finished school and gave up the job at the butchery, he again followed in his footsteps, leaving the paper round to his younger brother. From the start, Douglas took a keen interest in every aspect of the work at the butcher’s shop. By the time he was 15, he made sausages and basic cuts of meat. “I liked the work and the atmosphere in the shop, the banter, the camaraderie.”

His formal training as a butcher at Smithfield College included a slaughter course. But Douglas preferred butchery. “It is far more creative, you have to be innovative and develop new products, you work with spices and I love the retail side, dealing with customers. You don’t have that in slaughter.”

But by the time Richard Douglas was a fully trained butcher, butchery was in decline. Many High Street butchers were closing down because the owners retired and they had no successor. Others began buying in ready to sell freezer packs of meat – that saved labour costs, but it also meant that the type and quality of meat on offer was no different from what customers could get at the local supermarket. The businesses that not only survived but thrived were high-end craft butchers, and that was what Richard Douglas wanted to be.

His first job was at Frank Godfrey’s in Highbury Park, a family business since 1905. “I was really lucky because I learnt whole carcass butchery, that’s such an important skill and there are not a lot of places that still teach it,” says Douglas. Whole carcass butchery is the ability to break down a whole side of beef or a whole pig or lamb, making the best use of the meat and providing specific cuts demanded by chefs. At Frank Godfrey’s, Douglas worked as assistant manager until he got the opportunity to become manager at the high-end Kent & Sons butcher’s shop in St John’s Wood. From there, he eventually moved to M. Moen & Sons in Clapham.

Having worked with the very best craft butchers throughout his career, Douglas had a clear idea what he wanted for his own business: Carnivore sells only organic and free-range meat. He works directly with four famers, but because there is more demand for specific, high value cuts such as steaks, he has to buy in meat from wholesalers, too. There are a lot of factors that decide the quality of meat. Raising animals for meat is a skill – it’s about good husbandry and good feed but also about the life-long good care a farmer provides. But even the meat from an animal which had a good life can be of low quality, if it is not slaughtered humanely.

Long transport times, bad conditions in the holding pens at the abattoir and time pressure during slaughter, all this will have an effect on meat quality, says Douglas. “I can tell from looking at the carcass whether an animal was stressed right before or during slaughter,” says Douglas, “to me it’s obvious in the colour, the structure, the tension of the fibres and I will reject such meat.” In big slaughter facilities, it’s near impossible to slaughter animals stress-free, he says, “there is a lot of throughput, it causes pressure to manage a large number of animals in a minimum of time, they sense that and get stressed”. But there are fewer and fewer small abattoirs. One of the farmers that Douglas works with farms near Tunbridge. Until recently, this farmer could bring his animals to a nearby abattoir, the transport time was really short. But right before Christmas, the facility closed its doors; in future these animals, too, will have to be transported much further.

As we talk, I take in the atmosphere of the shop. It is easy to love a bakery with its delicious smells and beautifully decorated cakes. Carnivore has a different but equally sensuous aesthetic: steaks on the bone rest in a dry aging cabinet; long, thin smoked sausages hang over a wooden rod like a fringe curtain; there is a fresh, meaty, slightly smoky scent in the air; the display of marinated meats, skewers, sausages, spiced ground meat patties and ready to barbeque ribs is beautifully arranged; and on the large, wooden butcher’s block behind the counter lies a big bunch of rosemary, sprigs of which will be tied to some of the roasts.

The rosemary comes from Douglas’ other business, the greengrocer ‘Herbivore’ next door. Why does a butcher also sell fruit and veg? The shop in Sidcup is next door to a greengrocer, too, says Douglas. “It was a real draw for customers and when the owner decided to sell up, we were afraid the parade would look deserted. So, we took it on.” The combination of greengrocers and butchers works really well, he says. Customers buy meat and can easily pick up the herbs they might need or the vegetables to go with the meal, and the butchers have a steady supply of herbs and spices for the products they create. That’s why in Bromley, too, there is an Herbivore right next to the Carnivore butcher’s shop. In total, 16 staff, several of whom are family, work across both the butchers and the greengrocers. At present, the one butcher apprentice is Douglas’ nephew. It’s hard to interest young people in a career as a butcher, if they haven’t experienced what craft butchers actually do, says Douglas. He hopes that more young people will come into the trade and craft butchery becomes better recognised for what it is: a highly skilled and creative profession.

Considering the beautiful and sumptuous decor of the shop, the orange plastic donation box on the counter seems a little out of place. The money customers give goes to New College Worcester, a college for blind and partially sighted children and young people, which son Jake attends. The tumour damaged the optic nerve in both eyes and Jake has been registered blind since 2006. “But he is doing well,” says Douglas, “he has to have an MRI every six months and needs to take medication on a daily basis, but so far the tumour hasn’t come back.”

 

With thanks to National Craft Butchers for helping us to develop this series. To find out more, visit NationalCraftButchers.co.uk.

Photos by @M.Kunz.

 

 

 

When was the last time you bought meat at a high street butcher’s shop? Chances are that it’s been a while, either because the butcher’s shop near you closed down years ago or because it’s simply easier to pick up meat and sausages when you do your weekly shopping at a supermarket.

For consumers, shopping at a supermarket has advantages: finding everything you need in one place makes it fast and convenient, usually there is plenty of parking space available and opening hours are longer than those of specialist shops such as high street bakers, butchers or fishmongers. A big enough branch of a supermarket will have a fresh meat counter, but mostly shoppers grab whatever they need from the coolers, portioned and neatly packed. In the last 12 months UK consumers bought 600 million kilos of beef, 84 million kilos of lamb and 1 billion kilos of pork, spending just over £11 billion – most of it in supermarkets.

Such convenience for consumers has consequences for farmers and processors: supermarkets need large volumes of product, fast and on demand. As a result, supply chains have become shorter and more centralised. Abattoirs have become much bigger and specialise in killing one or two species. Hundreds of head of cattle or pigs can be slaughtered and processed in a day. This efficiency reduces not just costs but also paperwork and the need for highly trained staff: the processing of an animal is broken down into many dozens of single movements performed by as many dozens of workers on an assembly line. Each movement has to be fast and precise, but it can be learnt on the job, you don’t have to be a trained butcher to repeat the same cut over and over. Small abattoirs with a team of trained butchers cannot compete on price and over the past 10 years many have had to close down. In 2021, just under 90% of beef cattle were killed in 31 medium and larger abattoirs, and 98% of sheep were killed in 57 medium and larger abattoirs. Only 5.4% of cattle and 0.7% of sheep were killed in smaller abattoirs.

Why is this a problem?

With fewer and fewer abattoirs, animals have to be transported further to slaughter – a journey that is often stressful and uncomfortable for the animals, in particular those who have spent all their lives within the same herd, grazing. But the problems reach much deeper: big abattoirs need a constant supply of ‘cookie cutter’ animals that are pretty much the same size and weight. Similar to the chassis of a car, the carcase moves along an assembly line, the main difference being that cars are assembled and carcases ‘disassembled’. For a worker to repeat one task often dozens of times per minute, the ‘parts’ must not vary much in shape and size.

We witnessed last autumn what happens when pigs don’t have their ideal slaughter weight. Because of severe worker shortages, the slaughter capacity at abattoirs was greatly reduced, and pork producers had to keep many animals on farm and continue feeding them. Very soon, the lack of space caused animal welfare concerns, but in addition, many pigs also grew too large for an abattoir to handle and had to be culled, their meat never entering the food chain. It’s not that the meat of a 300 kilo sow (the ‘normal’ slaughter weight is about 120 kilos) couldn’t be delicious – the fat of a grown pig is actually essential for making high value products such as salami. The problem is that only a fully trained butcher will have the very specific skills to slaughter and process such a large pig, which wouldn’t even fit onto the assembly line of a big slaughter facility.

The industry’s need for ‘same size’ animals has shaped the way they are raised: UK supermarket beef, for example, might be born and raised on a conventional beef farm in rural West Wales, where the fields are  sown with artificial fertiliser, and to increase growth rates, the cattle are fed supplementary concentrate feed, including genetically modified soya imported from Brazil. When it’s time for slaughter, a haulier collects these animals and transports them 170 miles to an abattoir in Lancashire. The meat products are then distributed across the UK to supermarket shelves, possibly even returning to a supermarket shelf in rural West Wales.

This system has huge environmental implications such as emissions from transport and the use of imported protein sources such as GM soya, which is having a devastating effect on rainforests in South America. Other feed grains are grown in the UK under intensive arable systems that have become biodiversity deserts.

It could be so different

And yet, the British Isles in large parts are predestined for growing grass and keeping livestock. If grazing on permanent pastures is well managed (the pasture is neither over nor undergrazed), little or no chemicals are needed and there is no need to import soy. Arable land then becomes available to grow food for humans.

From shaggy Highland Cattle to the tiny Dexters, from hardy Romney sheep to woolly Blue Face Leicesters, Britain is home to a wealth of cattle and sheep breeds, each of which does particularly well under specific topographic and climatic conditions but all very different in looks, size and weight. In a well managed system, these animals are not only effective ‘land-managers’ delivering environmental benefits, they could also be a source of healthy, nutritious and local food – if only the farmers had access to a local abattoir. Which, increasingly, they don’t.

Our food system is based on industrial food production, centralised supply chains, just in time delivery and supermarkets stocked with cheap food. What’s rarely talked about is how easy it is to cheaply produce highly processed foods with low nutritional value such as sugary cereal, not just because of the relatively low value of the ingredients, but also because the costs to the environment and to our health are not factored in. Food manufacturers do not pay for the emissions caused by transport, fertiliser and pesticide use, nor for the healthcare costs arising from diabetes and obesity. As Nicolette Hahn Niman explains in her book Defending Beef, consuming small amounts of sustainably produced meat from grass-fed animals has health benefits as well as benefits for the environment and local and rural economies.

From farm to fork via your local supermarket?

Given the way our food system works, it is unsurprising that consumers have lost the connection with where their meat is coming from. Very little produce can be traced from farm to fork. Education and information would help. But how do we get sustainably produced local food, meat in particular, to consumers? The pandemic has shown that at a local level, farmers and local food shops were able to adapt very quickly and react to the demands of customers providing local food to local families. But most of us shop in supermarkets. Supermarkets control British food retail and have the single biggest role to play in improving food supply chains and the national diet. As huge buyers from the farming sector, these corporations wield an overwhelming degree of power over their suppliers.

It’s not all bad news, some tentative steps have been taken: in Wales, Lidl has a range of Welsh beef products on the shelves as part of their ‘commitment to supporting local farmers’. According to the industry website Sterling Choice, Morrisons claims they are moving to sourcing only British meat: “In July, it was announced that Morrisons was to become the first UK supermarket to commit to only selling British meat, and would stop selling imported fresh meat, such as lamb from New Zealand, which it has previously done during the winter months.” How far this meat travels within the UK is a different matter.

Waitrose told me in an email: “All of our fresh lamb, pork (including bacon), beef and chicken are UK sourced and come from local farmers we know and trust.” In another email, Waitrose said the data on which farm delivers what meat were recorded internally:  “(We) have full traceability from farm to shelf and can trace each piece of meat back to farm…We also submit [this information] to Business Benchmark and Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW).” BBFAW has given Waitrose Tier 1 status, but again, there is no way of knowing how far the animals had to travel to an abattoir.

Possibly, farmers could do – and are doing – more, too. Just last week, a group of farmers together with a butcher launched ‘The Good Beef Index’, a label that scores meat quality, its environmental footprint and the conditions under which it was raised. “We want to bring consumers and beef farmers together,” says Ian Warren who runs the family’s butcher’s shop in Launceston in Cornwall. He worries about the future supply of the highest quality beef from local farmers: if we want farmers to raise animals sustainably and produce excellent quality meat, we have to make sure the farms are financially viable, he says. For him, it is about educating consumers and he hopes the Good Beef Index will create demand, because only then will retailers stock it.  “This has to be consumer driven,” says Warren. How will he and his farmer colleagues get consumers interested in yet another label? For a start, endorsements by well known chefs may help – 70% of Warren’s business is meat supply to restaurants – but in the end this is a long-term project.

Networking is essential – whether it is through informal groups, co-ops or associations – farmers who are part of a group that aims to facilitate slaughter, transport and marketing will be in a better position to get their meat onto the shelves of retailers. They could work with distributers who would be able to deliver orders via EDI (electronic data interchange) which would open up the choice to consumers who would like to buy more locally produced products but can’t make the leap to changing their shopping habits to buying all meat in a butchers or at (online) farm shops. With this method, supermarkets could also allow shelf space for locally produced, unprocessed meat products. Another option would be to bring the local butcher into the supermarket, where they could sell locally sourced meat with the expertise only a trained butcher has. On the continent, the ‘shop in shop’ model works well at least for bakeries.

Even with a strong demand for local, sustainably produced meat, at present all efforts to increase the supply are hampered by regulatory burdens, unfavourable planning laws and staff shortages. For local, sustainable meat to reach supermarket shelves, we need a network of small abattoirs where well trained and well paid butchers are able to humanely slaughter and process not just different species, but animals of varying size, age and temperament.