VANS 4 BUTCHERS

Since the break-up a few years ago of the “British Meat” brand into four separate promotional bodies, the English Beef & Lamb Executive have been tethered to the post compared to their colleagues in Scotland and Wales by not having the benefit of being able to protect the brand under EU legislation.

All that could soon change because the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has received applications from EBLEX and MLC to register English Beef and English Lamb individually as products of protected geographical indication under the EU protected food name scheme. If the applications are successful and the names are protected then only meat conforming to the registered specifications would be permitted to use the “English” brand name.

As they are required to do before a decision is taken on whether to forward the applications to the EU Commission for the next stage of the process, Defra are consulting interested parties within the UK to give them an opportunity to comment or object to the applications and the Federation will be supporting this action as it did in the case of Welsh lamb.

Coincidentally, the Federation has recently commented publicly about the whole situation of the EU scheme by asking whether Europe was specialising in protectionism (July Food Trader – Down to the Bone) to gain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace or whether it was genuinely to protect products where the quality or other characteristics are essentially due to a particular environment.

The downside for any quality assurance initiative is the possibility of creating a two tier market particularly where there is a break in the farm to retail chain leaving some butchers unable to enjoy the schemes benefits. However, that already applies regardless of the applications and EBLEX have put forward a forceful case to put England on a similar footing to the other parts of the UK.

In seeking to achieve that result they have given a comprehensive description of the product and proof of origin. English beef is the name given to carcasses or cuts of meat derived from cattle born, reared, finished and slaughtered in England and similarly, English lamb is the name given to carcasses or cuts of meat derived from sheep which are up to one year of age, which are born, etc., in England.

Establishing a separate identity is always the hard part for any product aspiring to be protected and it needs to satisfy the public perception. As EBLEX have said in their own application, beef, and especially roast beef, has always been seen as emblematic of the English. References to the English and their roast beef are so common in literature say EBLEX that they led to the continental nickname for Englishmen being called “the roast beefs”, and the well known caricatures of the Tower of London’s Beefeaters. Better that probably than being called “frogs” or “woolybacks”.

Essentially, the success of the two applications will depend on consumer demand for locally sourced meat which from the butchers viewpoint certainly seems to be increasing. Whether the EU accepts that argument remains to be seen but it would be very perverse for England to be denied the same PGI status as other parts of the same island.

Oct 2006 – Source: NFMFT