Last week I was honoured to present one of the BBC Food & Farming awards - the Oscars of the food and farming world. The award I gave was, I feel, the most important one of the day, for it was the Derek Cooper Award, given for a lifetime's achievement; and it went to a man whose work is of immeasurable importance. Here's how the BBC presenter, Sheila Dillon, reported it:"There wasn't exactly a theme to this year's Food and Farming Awards but great bread and the revival of our native animal breeds were a kind of thread on an occasion that was funny, moving and a reminder of what counts.
"The breeds were highlighted by Farmer of the Year, farm manager Jonathan Birchall, who on 2250 acres of the Kings Walden estate in Hertfordshire runs a mix of rare breed animals. And the reason he can? The life's work of Richard Lutwyche who nearly 20 years ago when working in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, realised that the only way to preserve our native farm breeds was to persuade us all to eat them.
"At that time some of the breeds we'd lived with, and on, for hundreds and in some cases over a thousand years were on the brink of extinction. Now because of his work promoting breeds such as Gloucester Old Spot pigs and Wiltshire Horn sheep, the animals that our ancestors developed to suit our different landscapes are farmed from Caithness to Cornwall. Richard won the prestigious Derek Cooper Award."
To see the importance of Richard's work you have only to go to the RBST website. One breed of farm animal becomes extinct every moth somewhere in the world. This might seem incredible, but I myself well remember, some years ago, trying to find a local variety of pig, the Oxford Sandy and Black. Twenty years ago it was virtually extinct.
Richard Lutwyche has been involved in thwarting extinction since the 1970s. I think he's a hero, because he's the sort of passionate, relentless achiever I respect and admire. Without him we'd have lost a big chunk of our British heritage, not least the Gloucester Old Spot pig. Popular and widespread as this breed is today - it was granted European Commission Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status in July of this year - it is still in a precarious position in the USA, for example, where it is on the "critical" list of the American Livestock Breeds conservancy (fewer than 200 annual registrations), while the RBST here puts it in "Category 5, Minority," meaning that in the UK there are fewer than 1,000 registered breeding females.
Yet the Old Spot is a wonderful pig - the world's oldest pedigree spotted pig, placid and easily managed ("the most laid back pig," says the breeders club), a hardy, outdoors breed, and, say Old Spots fanciers, produce the best tasting pork and bacon, because the depth of body provides a large percentage of bacon per bodyweight. The breed were once known as the orchard pig, as they fed off drop apples - and also provided some degree of pest control in the orchard. Its popularity only diminished with the advent of intensive farming, when lean, high-yield breeds were chosen to flourish in factory conditions. We all know that the real gastronomic pleasure of the pig is its fat! There was something puritanical as well as health-obsessive about shunning fat breeds of pig.How terrible it would have been to lose the breed. But before the founding of the RBST there was not even a gene bank to protect listed breeds from the effects of epidemics and other disasters. Now it's consumer pressure that's restoring the Old Spots and other rare breeds.
Happily this all seems part of a new attitude to food in the UK, where people like Richard are reinvigorating our own artisan food culture, and restoring to us some of the colour bleached out of our lives by factory farming. He acts as a sort of marriage-broker between the rare breeds farmer and the butcher, a one-man meat marketing board for rare breeds.
Richard's award-winning efforts have led to 1) an extension of rare breeds of several species 2) a real treat for the Sunday lunch table and 3) helping revive rural Britain. He deserves applause, especially from us chefs. After all, we must praise the good health and management of the soil he encourages. With more farmers following his example, instead of importing 70% of our food and suffering the carbon footprint-consequences of this folly, we might grow and eat a lot more of our own food - to our profit and our pleasure.
Thank you very much for the mention Raymond. We agree that Richard Lutwyche is a deserving winner for the work he has done in preserving these unique and very useful breeds.