Retailers Help Calm Pork Concerns

Butts Farm Shop in Gloucestershire, which specialises in pure bred British pork, lamb and chicken, is already showing DEFRA notices in-store, reassuring customers about buying UK reared pork products. Owner, Gary Wallace, is confident that sales will not be affected by the scares. “The bird flu scare doubled our free range chicken sales because people sharpened up their views on traceability and sought to find the best products,” he says. “Sometimes bad publicity can actually help quality artisan producers, because it gives us the opportunity to promote the premium products we sell,” he adds.

Health officials are assisting the industry by making it a priority to reassure the public that while they need to be aware of the situation they do not need to be alarmed. “There is continual surveillance of pigs in this country and there is currently no evidence of this variant of the disease. Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is perfectly safe,” says Nigel Gibbens, UK chief veterinary officer.

Indeed, consumers are undoubtedly aware that the World Health Organisation (WHL) has highlighted the potential severity of the situation, raising its pandemic phase alert to level 4. “This means there is strong evidence of sustained human to human transmission of a new influenza virus from an animal origin, which is causing community level outbreaks in Mexico,” says professor Neil Ferguson, who was part of yesterday afternoon’s discussions, which determined the severity of the warning.

Offering a word of advice for retailers, Alexander Evans, manager of Westmoreland Farm Shop, in Cumbria, says, “We don’t know how people are going to react to these scares, but if we’re all following food hygiene precautions and producing quality UK products (as we should be), we are in a strong position to reassure our customers and can therefore remain confident about sales.”