British pork

Mrembo

Where will i get my pork from now?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1120286/Love-bangers-bacon--Danny-Penman-traced-origins-British-pork--way-Polish-factory-shocking-discovery.html

A_fiend_for_life

Options might be organic or RSPCA assured. Unless you know a local farmer / farm shop or have a local farmers market selling free range pork.

Debt_Free_Chick

Buy from a butcher who can tell you the breed of the animal and when, where and how it was reared. A butcher who cannot tell you this about any piece of meat you buy is not a butcher at all and simply buying pre-cut meat in bulk. Rather like the supermarkets

Bongedone

Look for the Farm Assured logo: -

http://www.redtractor.org.uk/site/REDT/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

Jnelhams

Farm shop, there is one near Sandy in Beds, where they sell their own Pork. Seeing the little piggies outside is a little off putting.

http://www.localsbest.co.uk/index.html

competitionscafe

http://www.localfoodshop.co.uk/category/Pork-and-bacon/13

IamJen

You could forgo the pork altogether and become a vegetarian.

margaretclare

Look at the BigBarn website for local producers:

https://www.bigbarn.co.uk

Where we buy pork from normally, you can actually see the pigs in the field. They're the traditional Essex breed.

Apparently under EU rules all kinds of items can be produced in another country, shipped here in bulk, then repackaged with a Union Jack label stuck on to them.

I don't buy any meat of any kind unless I know where it comes from, where it was born, what conditions it lived in, how it died. But with more and more people losing their jobs, how many people are going to think that way? Hugh F-W's friend Hayley has recently become converted to Freedom Foods chicken and eats less but better quality rather than 2 for £5 chickens which are mainly fat, terrible quality meat. But how many people will really think - if faced with 2 packages, one costing more than the next, will people just go for the cheapest and not care where it came from?

competitionscafe

"Jamie Saves Our Bacon: Thursday 29 January 9:00pm - 10:35pm Channel 4

With his customary evangelical fervour, Jamie Oliver is on a mission: he wants us to eat British pork and thus save our ailing pig-farming industry. He is powerfully persuasive using an occasionally queasy mixture of charm, shock tactics (he attends the slaughter of a pig) and recipes. But there is much at stake. Sow stalls, where pigs are able to get up, lie down and do nothing else, are banned in this country. They are, however, a hugely cost-effective and efficient way of producing pork. But sow stalls won't be banished from the rest of the EU until 2013, which will continue to flood the UK with cheap bacon. A passionate advocate for British farmers, Oliver corrals supermarket bosses, Government and shadow ministers, pig farmers and other industry specialists in a studio, complete with a birthing pig who pops out piglets throughout the show, as he pleads with us to buy British."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/dna/mbfood/F2670470/ext/_auto/-/http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsServlet?event=10&channelId=132&programmeId=91782340&jspLocation=/jsp/prog_details_fullpage.jsp

Lotus-eater

After watching Hugh last night do the chickens, I came up with the idea that every bit of meat sold should have a representative photo of the animal present in its reared environment.
I think not a bad idea, although it would need impartial monitoring.

greenbee

Great idea lotus-eater! I suspect we'd end up with a few more vegetarians if more people start associating meat with animals. Perhaps dairy products should also have these kind of pictures too.

Hopefully a few consciences would be stirred (or at least people might be concerned about being seen to eat 'the wrong kind' of meat!).

I buy meat either from the butcher (who as Debt Free Chick points out, should know where the meat has come from, so ask), farm shops (ones I trust, some of them buy in rather a lot) or stalls on farmers' markets where I can talk to the stall holders.

There are also certain brands of sausages I will buy in the village shop/supermarkets if I'm in a rush, but only because I've seen their piggies running about outside (frequently on the road, it has to be said, they're very good at escaping!), as they're farmed near where my parents live.