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Get your free copy- A campaign to save one of our national treasures, the high street butcher has been launched by the farmer & wholesaler butcher John Penny & Sons
‘The Meat Crusade’ aims to put quality butchers’ meat back on the British dinner tables. John Penny, eighth generation farmer and butcher explains, “We were once a nation of shopkeepers with generations of butchers, bakers and greengrocers who knew every customer by name.
“The way we shop for meat has been radically altered by the domination of faceless but convenient one stop shops that encourage the use of mass food production techniques to create high volumes of produce. However, these techniques often reduce an animal’s quality of life, which in turn, affects the taste and quality of the meat we buy, it’s time that shoppers go back to their local butcher.”
The decline of the high street butcher has been swift accelerated by challenging economic conditions. There used to be some 22,000 in the mid-90s, according to Ed Bedington, editor of the Meat Trades Journal. In 2010 there were just 6,553.
The campaign aims to attract high profile support from chefs and food writers as well as help butchers to compete with the larger retail outlets. Not only in offering a wider range of goods, but how they trade. The campaign highlights ways to help butchers trade, suggesting an old-fashioned delivery services or initiating an out-of-hours pickup service at the local pub.
For more details on The Meat Crusade watch this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tied59uzzg
