[SteveHants]

One of the guys I rent grazing off sends on 500 pigs a week...I keep meaning to ask him if it pays, but it must because hes still doing it.

[Mrs Snoodles]

Danish bacon......Bit of a story here folks.  My husband's late grandfather was the Chairman of the coop during the 70's, when it was massive and oversaw the import of cheaper Danish bacon which knocked the British producers for six.   When we emptied out his house q few years ago, we found huge amounts of silver gifts from the government, cutlery sets, engraved plates, jewellery etc.    My husband even remembers wearing T shirts with some sort of Danish bacon cartoon on it as a kid.   Skip a generation, and you find his grandson's  family working to keep large blacks, and selling British Pork - the irony!

[Penninehillbilly]

Wasn't it the Danes who invaded and stole much of Britains Gold and silver? - more irony?
(Can't remember details - never much good at history)

[rispainfarm]

Cleopatra, have you ever asked why he imports, thats unbelievable. i thought butchers sourced locally or at least in this country.

[kja]

Cleopatra, have you ever asked why he imports, thats unbelievable. i thought butchers sourced locally or at least in this country.

i asked our slaughterhouse / butcher the very same question ...............................price came back

[cleopatra]

Cleopatra, have you ever asked why he imports, thats unbelievable. i thought butchers sourced locally or at least in this country.

i asked our slaughterhouse / butcher the very same question ...............................price came back

its a small local butchers, smells lovely when you go in. they are great at cutting so i asked them to cure the bacon etc for me. he got really upset and refused. after discussing it he said it would cost alot for him to do it and he hadnt done it before as all their bacon is imported from denmark because of price.
i was niave as i just presumed the bacon would be local.

we have another butcher who sells danish bacon as his main choice but also sells homecured which is twice the price but very lovely.
he did infact do my back bacon but charged £75 per pig as opposed to the first butchers £30. that works out as expensive bacon as it was only the loin that was done.

we will do it ourselves next time but havent yet.

[kja]

i do a lot of our own bacon but if we have customers wanting bacon gammons etc i send them to a guy that charges £96 to cure whole pigs smoked or unsmoked, sliced bacon netted gammon joints & vac packed i just pay £20 for the kill we usually have a couple done at a time......although this time not much got sold as we decided it was so good we have almost munched through 2 pigs in bacon form this year with a little help from my family  .

[Raine]

 


I am so glad we have Lincolnshire Co-op!  They sell Lincolnshire pork and beef including sausages and bacon.


Otherwise I would be trawling through the farmers markets for British produce, as many supermarkets are driven by the prices people are willing to pay.


If only the general public understood more about food production and cost!

[hughesy]

If only the general public understood more about food production and cost!

Joe public in general don't care where their food comes from as long as it's as cheap as possible. It's an impossible situation really as if everyone wanted high welfare/free range/rare breed etc it would be impossible to supply them with it. The population as a whole must have an efficient and cost effective food supply, hence the supermarkets and the modern intensive farming methods. The minority who do care where their food has come from and do care about animal welfare etc are our customers or potential customers and they understand for the most part that small scale production costs more.

[SallyintNorth]

Joe public in general don't care where their food comes from as long as it's as cheap as possible. It's an impossible situation really as if everyone wanted high welfare/free range/rare breed etc it would be impossible to supply them with it.

Rant warning 

From a livestock farmer's perspective, Joe Public wants his high welfare livestock in the fields but wants to eat cheap meat.  So we have very high welfare standards which add enormously to our cost of production, and import a very significant proportion of our meat from countries with lower - or less well-enforced - animal welfare standards.  (Note to self - really must find out what proportion it is that is imported.)

Our butcher majors on local, traditional breed beef.  His pork is also locally-produced, and he buys a lot of his lamb from us    and the rest from the local abattoir, who will have bought them in the local markets.  He cures bacon to sell as home-cured, but for the customers who want the cheaper stuff, he says he's tried and tried but he cannot source locally, or even from the UK, bacon of the quality he needs at a price his customers will pay - so the non-home-cured stuff is from Denmark.     Once we knew that (he doesn't advertise the fact but will tell you if you ask), we have only ever bought his home-cured, of course. 

I could go on ... and on .... and on  ... 

[hughesy]

A butcher's shop will have a completely different set of customers to those who buy their meat from asda or wherever, especially if it's a high quality establishment that has what we would consider ethical values. The joe public in my previous post was the supermarket variety.

[rispainfarm]

A butcher's shop will have a completely different set of customers to those who buy their meat from asda or wherever, especially if it's a high quality establishment that has what we would consider ethical values.

I agree, however, there are many more people out there who want to buy the non-supermarket meat and who care where their meat comes from but just can't afford the higher price so therefore buy cheap meat from the supermarkets. i feel as long as this recession goes on, the people buying our pork will become less and less.

[kja]

A butcher's shop will have a completely different set of customers to those who buy their meat from asda or wherever, especially if it's a high quality establishment that has what we would consider ethical values.

I agree, however, there are many more people out there who want to buy the non-supermarket meat and who care where their meat comes from but just can't afford the higher price so therefore buy cheap meat from the supermarkets. i feel as long as this recession goes on, the people buying our pork will become less and less.

in reply to hughesy i dont think for 1 minute the butchers and supermarkets never cross paths we have a friend that owns a butchers shop nearby and as the recession has got hold of purse strings very often buys in supermarket over orders from wholesalers to sell as the weeks offer she says its the first time in over 80 yrs the family butchers have had to lower prices to hold onto customers. they used to rear their own livestock but have scaled down its cheaper to buy in.

in reply to rispainfarm we decided to sell weaners after pork sales dropped but weaner enquiries went up we used to send off about 50 pigs a year prior to the recession numbers have dropped as people seem to be struggling.

[rispainfarm]

I went to Tescos yesterday for part of my christmas food shop.  I spent just over £100 (no drink included on this shop) and you know got absolutely bugger all for it. I thought it would come to at the most £70-£80 when i got to the checkout but it came to nearly £120. The price of food is ridiculous, even at a supermarket  it rips holes in a budget. Our actual spare cash is getting less and less. We try and stick to a budget with everything and never ever use an overdraft or stick things on a credit card. I have got alot harder business wise nowadays. If things don't pay their way or look as if they will pay in the long run they will be abandoned sooner rather than later, rather than keep throwing money at things in the hope they work eventually or things pick up which is what we have done in the past.  Not everyones way of working but for me I have an absolute fear of not having cash to enable us to live on a day to day basis comfortably which has only come on in the last few years as the recession bites.  We try and buy all our meat from local producers, but because of the cost of everything - and I have no complaint as i have been a pork producer myself, so know the costs involved - we are unable to buy as much local produce as we would like. I suspect that goes for alot of people.