In 2003, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) launched the Government Strategy on Regional Food. It marked a renewed interest in promoting regional food in the UK, and something of a sea change.
"Ten years ago farming issues would have been dictated by economic reasons alone," says Simon Johnstone, policy adviser for regional food at DEFRA. "Now we're listening to other reasons such as environmental and social ones."
The most recent spur was the foot-and-mouth crisis. After the third major food scare here in 15 years (after salmonella and BSE), speciality food is being seen as an antidote to the food-and-farming culture that had spawned these outbreaks.
The Curry Report (part of the foot-and-mouth fallout) made specific recommendations for regional food to be made into a central component of a new regional economic strategy. Responsibility for growing the sector was passed to Food from Britain (FFB), the specialist body set up to promote UK produce, and the Regional Food Groups (RFGs). In return, FFB has been promised an extra £1m funding every year over three years.
For the Government, regional food is seen as the key to strengthening local economies. DEFRA reckons that 70% of speciality food producers are based in rural areas often bypassed by modern economic growth industries like technology and retail. By supporting regional food, the Government can encourage job creation and tackle social exclusion.
At the same time, speciality food and the farming practices it promotes - sustainable, environment-friendly and diverse - help the Government to end the practice, symbolised by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), of simply throwing money at farmers who produce the most. In turn, that new workforce is not dependent on CAP handouts, or the vagaries of exchange rates and the international commodities trade but on private enterprise and quality. "It was believed that it was better to compete at the top end rather than against those countries which were better placed to produce cheap commodities," says Johnstone.
Jane Wakeling, director of FFB, has been handed the task of growing the market by 25% over the next five years. Speciality food currently represents £3.7b out of a total UK food and drink market worth £66b.
All this points towards a renaissance for speciality food producers. "We're going to be spending the next five to 10 years trying to resurrect our food and reverse a trend," says Johnstone.
Food Tourism
In October 2003, Food from Britain (FFB) launched a joint food tourism initiative with VisitBritain, the organisation charged with promoting tourism to the UK. The idea is simple: to promote more speciality food in Britain as an attraction for tourists.
"We should all really have something to say about food and our regions," Nigel Haworth told guests at a meet-the-supplier event organised by North West Fine Foods at the Houses of Parliament. The co-owner and executive chef of the Michelin-starred Northcote Manor in Langho, Lancashire, added after the meeting: "Of course we should have every other style of food, but it's no use having everything else but. If I go to Tuscany I don't expect to eat bacon and eggs."
The sentiment is shared by visitors here. When surveyed by Food from Britain (FFB), 70% of overseas tourists said they would like to see more quality regional food on the menu. Nearly a third said the availability of quality regional food was a key factor in influencing their holiday destination.
Nearly 25 million tourists visited this country in 2003, and according to latest figures released by VisitBritain for the first quarter of this year, Britain enjoyed a year-on-year increase of 12% in the number of tourists visiting from Western Europe. If you think that a fifth of overseas visitor spend is on food and drink, there's obviously a huge market to tap into.
The challenge is to get those visitors beyond the M25, so that their spending power can boost local economies. With 70% of regional and speciality food and drink producers based in rural areas, food and drink becomes a crucial way to bring wealth to the regions. As Peter Paprill, director of North West Fine Foods and owner of Pendrills speciality food supplier, says: "We need people to visit Cumbria, for instance, and a desire to understand how its geography relates to its recipes and food can do that.
"When I travel around France, I always take a gastronomic guide with me so that I learn about and taste the food each place has to offer. The guides are listed by every d'partement," he continues. "I'm looking for one by every county in the UK."
Although various restaurant guides do flag up local produce, the food tourism initiative has resulted in a new book, Eating British, focusing on restaurants, producers and shops that promote Britain's regional foods. Published by the Guild of Fine Food Retailers and sponsored by Food from Britain, the first edition came out last year, but new entries are always being sought.
"Where there's good practice, we want to promote it," says Jane Wakeling, director of FFB. If you serve quality speciality food from your region, write to Eating British, Stanstead Publications, PO Box 1525, Gillingham, Dorset SP8 4WA, and get yourself listed. The two organisations are hoping it will become a standard guide.
And it's not just the overseas market. British people are on average likely to make about two-and-a-half short trips away to somewhere in the UK for at least a night every year. Putting yourself on the map through good speciality food can get you in touch with that market.
Pub showcase
Nigel Haworth and business partner Craig Bancroft will shortly open their new pub, the Three Fishes, at Mitton, Lancashire. As at Northcote Manor, Haworth will be making extensive use of speciality regional food. Here he gives us a sneak preview of the kind of dishes that will appear on the menu. All meats are all locally sourced from farms in the Ribble Valley.
- Treacle-baked free range Garstang bacon ribs, devilled black peas.
- Warm Morecambe Bay shrimps, chilli and mace butter, crumpets.
- House-cured meats, local cheeses, pickles, Bells organic breads, pickled beef, oxtongue, collared pork, ham.
- Fleetwood deep-fried haddock, real chips, garden pea mash.
- Jim Curwen's heather-reared Bowland Forest lamb cottage pie, soused strong onions, HP sauce.
- Lancashire hotpot, pickled red cabbage, buttered garden carrots.
- Apple valley pudding.
- Manchester custard, raspberry jelly, bananas.
- Lancashire curd tart, organic lemon cream.
On the taste trail
Another project VisitBritain is looking at is the Food Trail. Eventually a list of trails will be listed on VisitBritain's Taste website to give the tourist an instant gastronomic itinerary around various parts of the country.
As this is still an idea in progress, VisitBritain is happy to receive information and suggestions from the industry about places that could be included on these trails, and hear from operators that already link tourism to food.
Current ideas include:
- Restaurant and hotel visits.
- Pub trails for historic pubs or those focusing on regional specialities.
- Food themed trails, eg, cheese or wine.
- Walking festivals combined with visits to local producers.
Protected Food Status
Wouldn't it be nice to get some initials after your name? Well, in 1996 the European Union gave food producers exactly that chance by launching the first Europe-wide system of classification to protect food against inferior competitors and fraud.
Three main labels were introduced: PDO (Protected Designation of Origin); PGI (Protected Geographical Indication); and the Certificate of Specific Character. PDO signifies the most pure product because it demands that all raw materials must come from a specified region. For PGIs, raw materials can come from outside a region, but the final product must be created in the specified place.
It's no surprise that France and Italy lead the European league tables. Both countries are used to centuries-old wine classification systems, and both also have a speciality food business worth millions of euros globally every year. But while Italy has 134 classifications, and France 133, Britain has only 35.
"The scheme is not well recognised in this country," says Simon Johnstone, policy adviser for regional food at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). "We don't have that tradition, but there are potentially great benefits for your product."
The latest food to join the illustrious ranks is the Scottish Arbroath smokie. Only 67 producers which make smokies according to strict regulations - in traditional kilns, and within 12 miles of Arbroath - can now sell their products with an internationally recognised seal of approval.
Alex Spink, partner at fish merchant Alex Spink & Sons, says: "It's made a big difference to our business. We haven't even tried to market it yet, but there would be huge potential. I know of several merchants down south who are interested."
Cheddar is the obvious cautionary tale. The West Country town never secured protected status for its cheese, and although there's now a PDO label for West Country farmhouse Cheddar, the word Cheddar is used elsewhere. Its usage is now so widespread that it's too late to fix terms.
The process is, though, asking us to evaluate and identify just what our speciality food is: other applications, such as for Melton Mowbray pork pies and Cornish pasties, are proving a real headache because producers of other pork pies and pasties dispute which region should claim ownership of the foods. On the plus side, DEFRA is now helping with applications from Scottish farmed salmon, Colchester oysters, Newmarket sausages, Cumberland sausages and Cornish sardines.
It's not just the producer that profits. If you want to sell regional food to tourists, how much more authentic to offer specialities that have protected status?
The UK hall of fame
Cheeses
Beacon Fell traditional Lancashire (PDO)
Bonchester (PDO)
Buxton Blue (PDO)
Dorset Blue (PGI)
Dovedale (PDO)
Exmoor Blue (PGI)
Single Gloucester (PDO)
Swaledale (PDO)
Swaledale ewes' (PDO)
Teviotdale (PGI)
White Stilton (PDO)
Blue Stilton (PDO)
West Country farmhouse Cheddar (PDO)
Dairy
Cornish clotted cream (PDO)
Fish and seafood
Arbroath smokies (PGI)
Whitstable oysters (PGI)
Fresh meat/offal
Orkney beef (PDO)
Orkney lamb (PDO)
Scotch beef (PGI)
Scotch lamb (PGI)
Shetland lamb (PDO)
Welsh beef (PGI)
Welsh lamb (PGI)
Fruit and vegetables
Jersey Royal potatoes (PDO)
Beer and cider
Gloucestershire cider (PGI)
Gloucestershire perry (PGI)
Herefordshire cider (PGI)
Herefordshire perry (PGI)
Kentish ale (PGI)
Kentish strong ale (PGI)
Newcastle Brown Ale (PGI)
Rutland bitter (PGI)
Worcestershire cider (PGI)
Worcestershire perry (PGI)
Grants and funding
If Food from Britain (FFB) is to grow the speciality food market at home and abroad, certain obstacles need to be overcome. An inconsistent supply chain is one of the perennial complaints that afflicts local and speciality food producers, with the food service industry, in particular, saying it can't rely on a haphazard service.
"This area has been neglected. A lot more could have been done to get the food involved into food service," says Johnstone.
Jane Wakeling, director of FFB, agrees, and recognises the problems facing the regional food producer. "The producers may only be local," she says, "but if they want to grow they have to explore other avenues of distribution."
To that end, part of the money DEFRA has made available has gone towards helping smaller distribution companies. Taste of Anglia received a grant to establish supply logistics, as did Moorsfresh, a small company which supplies speciality and local produce from the North Yorkshire moors to local businesses and beyond.
Johnstone says the Government will start working with larger distribution companies that supply food nationwide, although they're unlikely to receive grants. "We want to encourage them to engage more with regional produce. Anything to grow the market is being explored."
Grants are being made further up the supply chain. In the Yorkshire Dales, where between 50 and 100 beef and lamb farmers are discussing an application to the EU for protected status, DEFRA is funding an abattoir in the area.
"The lack of abattoir facilities on doorsteps does stop a flourishing regional sector," says Johnstone. "We have enough abattoirs to cope with demand but not necessarily the right ones. Nowadays, most operate on a large scale, so if you want to slaughter only five or 10 animals they won't handle it." The idea is to generate economic growth concentrated in a local region.
In its role as facilitator and support network for UK food producers, FFB is also looking at ways to expose British food to a greater audience. These include a trip to the Salone del Gusto in Turin in October, taking 40-50 producers. "These guys wouldn't normally know about these shows," says Wakeling. "They need support to be able to show themselves off."
Visit http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/foodname/intro.htm to see the Government Strategy for Regional Food in full.