This little piggy goes to market

Radio 4′s Farming Today is this week looking at misleading food labelling. Not being natural early risers, we admit we only caught this later on iplayer. However, this is an area rife with Zebu and the outrageous and deceitful way in which food can be presented to the public deserves highlighting.

Unlike The Today programme, Farming Today refreshingly lets its interviewees talk without being interrupted every thirty seconds. So Jimmy Butler of Blythburgh Free Range Pork had time to make his point. “I have to accuse the major supermarkets. They buy pork in from abroad. They process it in any small way and cure it or put it through a production system.”

“They put Union Jacks all over it and use words like Hampshire or Wiltshire or any of the shires and they put on pictures of oak trees on rolling downs. Any sane person who is shopping will think that pork comes from Britain.”

“The supermarkets are misleading their customers. Why confuse them? Why not say this pork comes from Poland or Rumania? Why put a Union Jack on it? Why say ‘Wiltshire Cured’ when they know darn well it has been imported into this country? When you turn it over, in the smallest writing at the bottom is says: ‘Product of the EU’. Why don’t they just say so up front if they’re not trying to con and mislead their customers?

“[To buy British] the only thing they can look for is the Quality Standard Mark or the Little Red Tractor. A separate Union Jack with nothing else means absolutely nothing. I’ve got no problems with imports. We have to import. Just as long as the customer is not deceived.”

Tomorrow Farming Today is looking at cheese and later in the week they’ll be getting a response from the retailers. We’ll be listening – though not at 5.45 a.m.