One of the supermarket’s problems sourcing local food is the way they distribute food.

Of course, it’s a brilliantly efficient system which makes sense economically. But it depends on sourcing large quantities, globally, from large suppliers in order to streamline the supplier base and cut costs. The products are sent to a small number of very large central distribution units which then supply to individual supermarkets.

This means that to conform to the system local producers must first — even if their fields are next door to their local supermarket — send their produce to the nearest CD unit.
Not only that, they must grow in size so they can fit the supermarket profile of a large supplier. This is often difficult for small artisan producers, small farmers and local growers who may not be suited, or be able to afford to grow into larger operations. Their product may depend on individual care in the making. Some may want to live a less stressful – even if less rich – lifestyle.

Then there is the question of the power of the supermarket. Its monopoly and how the small producer is frightened-off by its bullying buying tactics. Supermarkets were first rumbled, regarding their buying tactics and difficulties sourcing locally from small producers/suppliers, with the publication of the Competition Commission’s report in 2000. Then in 2004, Joanna Blythman’s ‘Shopped: the Shocking Power of the British Supermarket’ put in the public domain — in more digestible detail – the reasons why supermarkets are not suited to sourcing locally.

Now they have all set up ‘regionality teams’ or ‘local sourcing programmes’ and would like us to believe they are more than a PR stunt. But look on the shelves of your local supermarket to see if it really means anything. I’ve given up hunting for ripe local, fresh and seasonal fruit and vegetables among the yards of shelf space given up to over-packaged, much-travelled, not seasonal, not ripe and definitely not local fruit and vegetables. Ok, there is the odd thing here and there. But it’s an effort to search, and much easier to go to a farmers’ market or farm shop. I complained recently to a Tesco manager in the heart of berry-growing Angus about Hereford strawberries on the shelves.

The only supermarket’s local sourcing programme which addresses the much-travelled question is Asda’s scheme in Cumbria and the South West of England to reduce food miles and get fresh local produce into local supermarkets via a smaller distribution unit (see the Farming Today message board). It’s hardly a drop in the ocean at the moment, but it could make a difference if it was rolled out throughout the country

So much supermarket hype has been flowing on the local sourcing question recently that you can’t help wondering if it’s got something to do with the success of the farmers’ market movement as well as other moves to preserve a local food system. Are supermarkets worried that unless they persuade customers of their local commitment they will loose out to a growing competition?

A consumer-led, buy-local-eat-local food revolution might be in its infancy, but – who knows- it might yet subvert the excesses of industrialised food retailing by reviving and supporting more accountable local food systems and more traditional British foods. The Slow Food movement argues for local rootedness, decentralisation and conservation of typicality.

That the benefit to communities of this approach is that local and regional foods are saved; there is an improvement in diet; a reduction in pollution; the development of food-producing skills; and more money circulating locally. For every £1 spent in a supermarket, 90p leaves the area, but every £1 spent in a local shop/market/farm supplier doubles its value to the local economy. To my mind Tesco’s efforts have a ring of tokenism about them, if you judge them by what’s on their shelves.

Catherine Brown is the author of The Taste of Britain.

Fifthestate took the opportunity of putting some tough questions to one of its authors, Catherine Brown (CB), and Tom Jaine (TJ), the man who first published it at a small independent press, Prospect Books, 8 years ago.

Should we care about whether our food is regional and local? Is British food really worth celebrating, or are we just pandering to a yuppie obsession in over-fussing about food?

So, Catherine, how did you come to the job of compiling a sort of Domesday Book of local foods with Laura?

CB: I suppose I started compiling it when I was very young – as a child — noticing different foods as I moved every year for holidays from home in Glasgow tenement land to East Coast fishing village to live with my father’s extended family. Such amazing contrasts could hardly have gone unnoticed.

Another important influence was cooking in hotels in the Highlands where I fought against the tide of exporting all the best local foods. These were things worth preserving, I thought, and I was determined they should be celebrated in their native land.

Finally, I ended up in the early 1970s at Strathclyde University’s Scottish Hotel School researching a project on how agricultural, fishing, social, economic, historical and political factors had influenced British regional foods. After four years research it was published in 1976 as British Cookery.

From then on I was hooked on preserving local foods and regional food traditions.

Ah ha. Then an EU grant started the Taste of Britain/France/Italy etc project off last decade, with experts compiling a ‘survey’, if you like, of all the specialities available in their respective countries. We might have known it wasn’t originally a British initiative! Are the continental European nations better at celebrating local food than the British, do you think?

CB: From a Scotland angle, yes. In the past so much of the best local food in Scotland was exported, especially in the second half of the 20th century, so local people did not have the same intimate knowledge with prime raw ingredients that you find in parts of some European countries. France in particular, of course.

But now the momentum to celebrate local foods, and regional traditions, is changing and there is no reason why we should not be just as good at it as the Europeans. Especially if we start eating the best produce in its native land instead of exporting it.

TJ: The French are superlative at this. They managed 27 volumes of detailed history and inventory as a consequence of Euroterroirs. The Italians are pretty hot at it too, although did not (although Catherine and Laura would know better) engage in quite the same way with Euroterroirs. They have their own autochthonous regional food promotion and preservation systems; the Spanish, ditto. Of the northern Europeans, the Irish responded to Euroterroirs and produced a book which is smaller, but very similar to The Taste of Britain, but the Dutch, for example, produced a not very good volume out of the process, perhaps reflecting the paucity of Dutch local foods. The British, of course, were completely hopeless.

The official bodies involved in the Euroterroirs process wanted nothing more to do with it once the research was completed. They neither wished to convert it into a book nor assist me when Prospect Books finally came onto the scene with a grant for so doing. As far as I can recall they didn’t even thank me for the free copy they got at the end of it. They have very limited imagination and are largely in thrall to large farming and producer interests.

Yes, I agree with you that the concept, say, of appellation contrôlée in France, seems to be a completely integral part of the culture. Isn’t the local food movement still a bit of a ‘yuppie’ trend here in Britain, though? Is it realistic to expect everyone to get behind it, no matter what their income and location?

TJ: Of course it is yuppie; to begin with you have to be literate to read the book, but it all depends what you mean by local food, and indeed, by movement. So far as I am concerned there is nothing more depressing than some ghastly man/woman producing second-rate paté and forcing us by moral blackmail to buy it because it is local.

However, it doesn’t seem to me difficult for any shopper, literate or illiterate, to decide that it is better in every way to buy English apples as opposed to Chinese or Canadian. And in part I feel that the local ‘food movement’ should guard against too greater preciousness in its specifications and look to promoting the broad brush angle.

CB: I don’t see it as a yuppie trend. Perhaps it might be in some yuppie areas. But the point is that the movement back to local foods is in its infancy, historically. It’s a momentum which needs nurturing, if it’s to become mainstream, which is why The Taste of Britain is so timely.

You first compiled this list in 1998. Since then, have you had to take anything out of the selection due it becoming extinct?

CB: Yes, but not anything major.

That’s good to know: we seem to be on the up then. And now lots of influential chefs and foodies like Gordon Ramsay and Delia Smith have written to you us and volunteered contributions for this book. Did their enthusiastic response surprise you?

CB: No, because those in ‘the know’, know about the current momentum back to a more sustainable food system with more emphasis on local foods and they understand the value of establishing their authenticity in a book like this.

TJ: For the book in its original form [c. 1998] the only chef that I can remember who responded with true and positive enthusiasm was Fergus Henderson at St. John. This is not to say that many chefs have for the last ten years or so been emphasising the origins of their ingredients in both menus and public statements. This has to be a good thing. Occasionally one discovers a chef who has been using lamb from a specific village or course has to bolster his supplies from some other location very, very distant from the named source, because poor old Farmer Giles ran out of lamb. But nonetheless, I think chefs do try current to source locally.

Just a minute. Tizer and Vimto have made the final selection! Why are they there?

CB: [we chose things like] Irn Bru because of their history as specially British — non-yuppie — fizzy drinks. Scotland is the only country in the world where sales of its other national drink (Irn Bru) exceed Coca Cola!

OK. This has been causing a few fiery debates in the fifthestate cupboard, so can you settle it for us once and for all — which region has the best local food? I’d say North of England (let’s face it, Yorkshire) for its seafood, ales and long tradition of bakery, but dairy queen Annabel reckons it’s the South West of England. Who’s right?

CB: An interesting question. Perhaps there should be a national poll.

That’s a very good idea. Anyone reading this, hello, if you’ve got any opinions on this, please share them. I’ll send anyone who manages to change our mind on the matter a free copy of the book (put a link to your own email/blog there so I can contact you!)

JT: Of course it’s the South West, but at some stage over the last few years I did develop a intellectual template for establishing a regional identity and it’s interesting that you could apply this template to several bona fide regions in Britain, none of which was better than the other. I was surprised how far this was possible even in as small a country as Britain. Of course, Catherine would say that the richest, or most distinct, region in Britain, is Scotland, with some reason.

CB: I’ve travelled as a food journalist through most parts of England and lived in Yorkshire for two years and certainly the South West and Yorkshire are serious contenders.
What I’d like to see, though, is those areas which do it best given some status as specially-interesting-food-destinations, like some areas of France and Italy have become. Then there would be an incentive for producers, and caterers writing menus, to let everyone know the local breed of cattle etc. and where it came from.

And, yes Tom, of course I think the best food is in Scotland. But, sorry, it’s not a region of England, though I had – very reluctantly – to accept this for the I purpose of Euroterroirs.

Thank you. That’s very diplomatic of you. Good job there’s a healthy 3 chapters on Scotland in the book. So, seriously, do you like Marmite?

TJ: yes, at 3.30 p.m. in the afternoon.

CB: Yes, on hot toast and because some people swear that eating marmite keeps away the midges — well, we live in hope.

What’s the best way to eat tripe?

TJ: very, very rarely. As a wartime baby I have serious emotional problems with tripe.

CB: Chopped into very small cubes, with lots of very finely chopped onions in a creamy white sauce and plenty of hot buttered toast. I used to serve Venison Tripe like this on the hotel menu but called it by its Gaelic name Pocha Buidhe and it was amazingly popular – I never disclosed the translation.

You have now…. I read a nice recipe for tripe the other day but it was French. Haven’t heard an appetizing one from Britain until now. Game is of course another one of this island’s native culinary gems, but it’s relatively rare to see it on the dinner table these days. There’s a wonderful variety of regional and delicious-sounding game in the book. If your readers wanted to try it out, where would be a good place to source it?

TJ: a proper butcher, of which there are not too many.

CB: From a game dealer who sources from a number of estates which have game available and who follows the right handling procedures. This is important with game which is not killed in an abattoir and must be transported from point of kill, correctly, and in the shortest time possible. Bad handling in the past has prevented game from becoming more popular but this problem is being sorted out and there is now much more reliable quality. Highland Game in Dundee has trailblazed on the question of quality Scottish wild red deer vension. They are at www.highlandgame.com.

Some butchers have a game licence and there are a good source too. Whoever you buy it from it’s essential to ask questions about it. Such as: Do you know its age? How long has it been hung? If it’s venison, what kind of deer is it? These will all affect the cooking. Good game dealers/butchers will be very happy to answer your questions and sometimes give advice on cooking. Highland Game have lots of advice on their website and food writer, Maxine Clark, has written a book on venison for Highland Game.

Highland Game sound just what fifthestate is looking for. We’ll try them (and Maxine Clark’s book). The Queen recently had a Great British Menu created for her 80th birthday. What would you have for your 80th birthday meal?

TJ: Something that didn’t damage my dentures.
Two dozen native oysters
Rare roast forerib of beef
Roast potatoes, fresh peas
followed by Gooseberry crumble
Now you can’t say that that ain’t traditional.

CB:
Selection of Scottish Shellfish (mussels, squat lobster, langoustines, spoots, queenies, cockles, whelks — whatever is available – cooked in their shells and served in a large deep Scottish soup plate with some of the bree – cooking liquor).
Roast Rib of Organically-fed Aberdeen Angus Beef (cooked on a wrack, served rare, with mustard and horseradish sauces).
Selection of Roast Vegetables (cooked underneath the beef and including Golden Wonder potatoes, whole red onions, carrots, parsnips and whole heads of garlic).
Salad Leaves with Dressing
Harvest-Home Cranachan (bowls on the table of: toasted oatmeal, Scottish berries and whipped cream plus a jar of heather honey with individual bowls for all diners to mix to their own to size and taste, lubricating it with generous slurps of a favourite malt whisky)

Can’t imagine a better 80th birthday feast. In fact, we don’t think any of us should wait that long. We’re off to see if we can source some of that now for ourselves.