Jamie Saves Our Bacon

UK - Jamie Oliver's hour-and-a-half long programme Jamie Saves Our Bacon will be aired tonight on Channel 4, starting at 9 PM.
calendar icon 29 January 2009
clock icon 3 minute read

The programme will be wholly supportive of British pig production. It will have a significant, and enduring, impact on demand for British pigs.


Jamie Oliver (Image source: Pig World)

Waitrose, which has a genuine British pork supply chain in place, is poised to reap the benefits. Tesco, with its Polish supply chain for value lines, is less well placed.

Pig producers will need to watch labelling carefully in the weeks ahead and blow the whistle on instances where imported pork is passed off as British.

A YouGov poll published today of 2,200 British adults, on behalf of Waitrose, shows 85 per cent of consumers want clear labels on pork to provide information on the conditions the pig was reared in and to identify the country of origin.

Waitrose is today calling on shoppers to support high welfare standards and buy British, after its research reveals 70 per cent of Brits are unaware of the poor conditions the majority of imported pigs are reared in.

82 per cent of consumers are unaware that well over half the pork consumed in the United Kingdom is imported from European countries with lower production standards.

In the run-up to the Jamie programme vegan groups have been hawking pig unit video footage around the Press but have found no serious takers as past investigations by independent auditors have discredited such footage, taken under cover of darkness.

Over the past few weeks and in the weeks ahead, British pig producers will see the not always edifying spectacle of a multitude of organisations attempting to use Jamie's campaign to attract attention to their own agendas.

Compassion in World Farming, which many producers consider to be habitually unhelpful to the British pig industry, has launched a campaign to ban farrowing crates. Sainsbury's has also highlighted farrowing crates in recent, carefully timed, publicity material.

Whilst tonight's Jamie programme will wrong-foot the Danes, another programme—to be shown on More4 on Tuesday February 3—will have a much more hard-line agenda, concentrating on Smithfield's production methods.

You can find out more about Jamie's programme by clicking here.

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