Traditional butchers say trade up following horse meat scandal

10:48am Sunday 10th February 2013 in News

FAMILY butchers have said the horse meat scandal has been a major boost for business.

Small family butchers in East Lancashire said customers wanting personal services and locally sourced meat had seen trade increase.

Yesterday frozen food giant Findus apologised over some of its beef lasagne products which contained horse meat.

It carried out a full product recall on Monday, two days before DNA tests confirmed that some of its products contained up to 100 per cent horse meat and it alerted the Food Standards Agency.

Last month 10million suspect burgers were taken off the shelves, including by retailers Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Iceland and Dunnes Stores.

Now the FSA has ordered food companies to test their beef products for authenticity.

Riley’s Butchers in Crawshawbooth said what was traditionally the quietest time of the year has been ‘more like the busiest’.

Geoff Riley said: “It hasn’t stopped here and people are being quite vocal about why they are in the shop. People say they are realising cheap meat is cheap for a reason.

“We’ve also had a few questions about our sources and we are quite happy to tell them we source livestock ourselves from farms and send it slaughter.

“You can’t be more sure than that.

“Meat is not a cheap product and you get what you pay for. We are benefitting because people know we know where our meat comes from.”

Nick Gell, manager at Cowman’s Famous Sausage Shop in Clitheroe, said: “People are realising that some of the stuff branded English, isn’t English at all. Or even the right animal. Whereas we can say we only use local beef and we know where it’s from. It’s absolutely put more trade our way, we’re very busy.”

Michael Marsden, of Whittakers Butchers in Blackburn Market, also said demand was high for its products because people wanted to know where their meat was sourced from.

East Lancashire’s pie firms have said they are confident about their beef sources, with Clayton Park and Holland’s Pies in talks with the FSA about how they will deliver the verification the agency is asking for.

A spokesman for Holland’s Pies said it was ‘business as usual’ at the pie fim as none of the suppliers they use were implicated in the horse-meat row.

A spokesman said: “We do not use any of the suppliers implicated, nor do we manufacture frozen ready meals, which were mainly affected. We will be working with the FSA on the question of testing though to check what they require.”

General Manager at Clayon Park pies Brian Ashworth said it too was confident about satisfying the FSA. He said: “All our meat is bought from one source, our parent company. They are putting in place checks with their suppliers and will do as the FSA recommend. But we are really confident about the meat we use. We’ve always been very careful to only work with responsible suppliers.”

Comments(27)

Excluded again says...
11:37am Sun 10 Feb 13

Good news. If you want to be sure what is in your food, buy it from people who know. Unlike supermarket giants who ask no questions, so long as its cheap.

Local butchers know where they get their meat from, so you can ask them.

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sen c b l says...
12:59pm Sun 10 Feb 13

...and muslims continue boycotting school meals till verification of halal authenticity is proven.

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Noiticer says...
1:19pm Sun 10 Feb 13

The big scandal is the fact that the Foods' Standards Agency has reduced its testing of food content by 40% due to cuts in funding. Another example of this country being returned to the 19th century and free for all capitalism when there were no controls and the people were exploited in every aspect of life including the alduteration of food. This is why the Co-operative Movement was established.

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Excluded again says...
1:22pm Sun 10 Feb 13

And its notable that two of the supermarket chains not implicated in this scandal are co-operatively owned - The Co-operative Group and Waitrose (owned by John Lewis).

If you want real value maybe you should use businesses with real values.

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Sajdin says...
1:57pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Excellent News, and the latest about the meat boycott by Muslims, is in my opinion stupid !

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hasslem hasslem says...
2:29pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Excluded again wrote:
And its notable that two of the supermarket chains not implicated in this scandal are co-operatively owned - The Co-operative Group and Waitrose (owned by John Lewis).

If you want real value maybe you should use businesses with real values.
what utter nonsense - the co-op HAS withdrawn products from shelf - i don't believe sainsbury's or morrisons have - is that notable.

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modan says...
2:33pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Holland's pie is part of Northern Foods which makes Fox's Buiscuits,Halland's pies,Pizza Goodfella,San Marcos,Harry Ramsden Retaurants,Gunstone Bakery ,Buxton Chickens which supplies Tesco.Sainsbury,Asda and Sainsbury.
Northern Food was taken over by Ranjit Boparan a Indian millionaire in April 2011 in a £342 Million deal.
Today the turnover is around £2 Billion and Mr Boparan is a Billionaire.

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Pearl neclesse says...
3:41pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Noiticer wrote:
The big scandal is the fact that the Foods' Standards Agency has reduced its testing of food content by 40% due to cuts in funding. Another example of this country being returned to the 19th century and free for all capitalism when there were no controls and the people were exploited in every aspect of life including the alduteration of food. This is why the Co-operative Movement was established.
Rubbish!
This has been brewing for a decade..still, if you decided to repeat the same lie time and again, you will begin to believe it!

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grumpyoldlady says...
4:10pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Is this just one of the problems Britain will have by being in an enlarged European Union which includes Romania?

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ToffeeGuy says...
4:49pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Excluded again wrote:
And its notable that two of the supermarket chains not implicated in this scandal are co-operatively owned - The Co-operative Group and Waitrose (owned by John Lewis).

If you want real value maybe you should use businesses with real values.
The 'real values' of these shops include expensive prices and I don't think Waitrose will be opening in East Lancashire anytime soon.

As a store which seems to pride itself on community values the Co-op should start by helping local people with reasonable prices.

And anyway, Waitrose did withdrawn some burgers as a 'precaution'.

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sen c b l says...
4:54pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Sajdin wrote:
Excellent News, and the latest about the meat boycott by Muslims, is in my opinion stupid !
Why?

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icannotrace says...
5:51pm Sun 10 Feb 13

modan wrote:
Holland's pie is part of Northern Foods which makes Fox's Buiscuits,Halland's pies,Pizza Goodfella,San Marcos,Harry Ramsden Retaurants,Gunstone Bakery ,Buxton Chickens which supplies Tesco.Sainsbury,Asda and Sainsbury.
Northern Food was taken over by Ranjit Boparan a Indian millionaire in April 2011 in a £342 Million deal.
Today the turnover is around £2 Billion and Mr Boparan is a Billionaire.
What's this got to do with the price of a steak and kidney pudding?

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A Darener says...
5:54pm Sun 10 Feb 13

icannotrace wrote:
modan wrote:
Holland's pie is part of Northern Foods which makes Fox's Buiscuits,Halland's pies,Pizza Goodfella,San Marcos,Harry Ramsden Retaurants,Gunstone Bakery ,Buxton Chickens which supplies Tesco.Sainsbury,Asda and Sainsbury.
Northern Food was taken over by Ranjit Boparan a Indian millionaire in April 2011 in a £342 Million deal.
Today the turnover is around £2 Billion and Mr Boparan is a Billionaire.
What's this got to do with the price of a steak and kidney pudding?
Just ignore Modan, he has got fed up of boring Rovers fans on the sports pages so he has now started boring everybody else. If he loves India so much he should go and live with Aunty Dasai.

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2 for 5p says...
5:59pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Who is checking the opportunist rat faced butchers meat then.
EXACTLY

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icannotrace says...
6:42pm Sun 10 Feb 13

2 for 5p wrote:
Who is checking the opportunist rat faced butchers meat then.
EXACTLY
You can't argue with that one, KERPOW, BAM

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useyourhead says...
11:09pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Now what was that film... ah yes, Soylent green. Seems eerily possible now. scary!

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Darwen Malc says...
11:57pm Sun 10 Feb 13

Too many lazy sods wanting cheap ready meals rather than buying decent local food and making their own meals!
Microwaves-R-us mentality. Serves you right! hahaha!!

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nice person says...
12:30am Mon 11 Feb 13

Darwen Malc wrote:
Too many lazy sods wanting cheap ready meals rather than buying decent local food and making their own meals!
Microwaves-R-us mentality. Serves you right! hahaha!!
Neigh...

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Fire Fly says...
2:58am Mon 11 Feb 13

ToffeeGuy wrote:
Excluded again wrote:
And its notable that two of the supermarket chains not implicated in this scandal are co-operatively owned - The Co-operative Group and Waitrose (owned by John Lewis).

If you want real value maybe you should use businesses with real values.
The 'real values' of these shops include expensive prices and I don't think Waitrose will be opening in East Lancashire anytime soon.

As a store which seems to pride itself on community values the Co-op should start by helping local people with reasonable prices.

And anyway, Waitrose did withdrawn some burgers as a 'precaution'.
Sorry to say it...Walton le dale, Preston has one, opened last year. Ocado (their online) has been in the area for at least 2 years. As you say though...very expensive.

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Excluded again says...
6:12am Mon 11 Feb 13

The problem is wanting food to be as cheap as possible. Horsemeat wholsales at about a quarter of the price of beef. If you want to make 'beef' cheaper, there is an obvious solution.

In every other market we understand that the cheapest is not usually mean quality. Why do we forget that when it comes to food?

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happycyclist says...
8:41am Mon 11 Feb 13

Excluded again wrote:
The problem is wanting food to be as cheap as possible. Horsemeat wholsales at about a quarter of the price of beef. If you want to make 'beef' cheaper, there is an obvious solution.

In every other market we understand that the cheapest is not usually mean quality. Why do we forget that when it comes to food?
Exactly. People wouldn't put paraffin in their cars yet seem happy to put the equivalent fuel into their bodies.

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Major Tom says...
4:27pm Mon 11 Feb 13

It looks like this has been the mane source of meat for many frozen dishes. However, it doesn't mean we have to be saddled with it.

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Major Tom says...
4:28pm Mon 11 Feb 13

My doctor told me to watch what I eat. So I went to Ladbrokes.

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gerry lines says...
1:41pm Thu 28 Feb 13

thought the taste of hollands pies already had horsemeat in them !!! esp steak ones!!

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Garthspeare says...
11:23am Sat 2 Mar 13

If pies etc taste good and aren't harmful then why worry what they contain. I can understand Jews and Moslems' principles regarding pork but what excuse have the rest of us for rejecting horse meat?

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Garthspeare says...
11:40am Sat 2 Mar 13

Major Tom (see above posts) is being frivolous in his attitude to a serious subject. The people we should worry about are not those who complain about horse meat but the ones who eat goats meat. I know we live in a nanny state but who are they trying to kid.

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A Darener says...
12:15pm Sat 2 Mar 13

Garthspeare wrote:
If pies etc taste good and aren't harmful then why worry what they contain. I can understand Jews and Moslems' principles regarding pork but what excuse have the rest of us for rejecting horse meat?
It is not the horsemeat that is the problem it is the fact that we are being charged for dearer beef. If they say the pies have horsemeat in them and are therefore cheaper it is then up to the consumer whether he buys it or not.

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