Talk’s cheap. Really dirt cheap sometimes.
Take Sainsburys for example. At present it’s championing itself as a supporter of local farmers, running adverts of impossibly content tomato-growers living on the kind of farms that Windy Miller might find saccharine-sweet.
Then, at the same time, it’s employed Jamie Oliver to wax lyrical about its New Zealand lamb, apparently oblivious to the fact that supermarkets’ predilection for shipping the meat 11,000 miles rather than buying it in their own back yard has meant local farmers are getting around £10 less per lamb compared to this time last year. With each ewe producing 2 calves, you can work out what that might do to the economics of a farm with 500 sheep.
Then look at Tescos. They were exposed in the national press for selling milk as sourced ‘locally’ when it in fact came from 150 miles away. The riposte: “The term local means different things to different people.”
Not really. I think we’re all agreed on what it means. We’re certainly agreed on what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean residing 150 miles away.
If I announced during the office lunch-break that I was just popping to the ‘local deli’ for a sandwich, people wouldn’t assume I was off to Devon for a midday chicken wrap. And, funnily enough, I've never seen the former French President referred to as ‘local-boy Jacque Chirac’ in Brighton’s Evening Argus newspaper.
The other excuse given by Tescos: “Some people consider local to be within their region”. Which is brilliantly ambiguous. If that region in question happens to be North Europe then I guess they’re right. And talk really is cheap.
