ROSE PRINCE
L, unching has joined the list of
endangered pursuits. I don't mean the type that is eaten at the desk with crumbs all over the carpet tiles below, beginning with a hideous squeal as the plastic seal is ripped from the sandwich pack. I mean proper, lingering lunching, the kind that goes with plenty of talk, varying degrees of alcohol, and where there is more than one course. Puritans have been trying to censure lunch ever since the idea of breaking to eat at midday was hit upon.
Even The Spectator editorial lunches — which [cook from time to time — occur less frequently these days, and now they are challenged by another enemy — the blunt instrument of the food regulators.
Truly good beef — the type that melts having been hung for a good long time, and whose deep, rounded flavour begs to be washed down with Bordeaux — is as much an institution as the Doughty Street lunches themselves. For five years I have bought beef from a one-woman private butchery in Dorset, run as a service for local livestock farmers. A few months ago she closed, unable to cope with the cost of making changes imposed upon her by the Food Standards Agency's inspectors. New laws insist she must hold a Cutting Plant Licence to wholesale meat. To be given this piece of paper, she was asked to 'improve' her premises at a cost of £30,000.
Her essential service went far beyond filling the tummies of Spectator lunch invitees. She fattened the steers of neighbouring farmers, then sent them locally for slaughter. After the meat had matured, she used 40 years' butchering experience tocut it. Her impeccable workplace was locally trumpeted. 'In 40 years I never hurt anyone,' she told me, meaning food-poisoning. She was standing in a cow barn, soon to be a holiday cottage and her new livelihood.
She butchered the local farmers' livestock for their own use, or to sell on to improve their dwindling incomes. In Defraspeak, this is diversification; but concept is one thing, practical realisation another. There is no joined-up thinking when the regulators encourage an entrepreneurial frame of mind but then make it impossible for small businesses to operate because the cost of the regulatory regime falls disproportionately heavily upon them.
Not only is the cost of the regulations onerous, but tales of inspectors' heavyhandedness are legion. Many feel intimidated by their constant demands made under the aegis of 'ever increasing standards', the mantra since the authorities were caught with their pants down over BSE.
Our Dorset butcher is 57 years old and lives and works alone. She already obediently spent £3,000 lining walls with plastic to satisfy FSA employee John Hukku. Seeing no end to his demands, she shut up shop. She felt — and she is not alone that the authorities are hostile to small food businesses. Despite a proven record as a responsible, skilled operator, she was in effect being asked to pay for that crucial bit of paper. The regulator would have been well aware that 00,000 worth of structural changes was a great burden for her to bear. Her closure will not only be a loss to the region's farmers; it could also drive such essential services underground. Carcasses with little market worth to anyone but farmers could now be chopped up in their muddy farmyards. You end up with a dire situation in which the FSA, created to solve problems in food hygiene, begets them.
Lunch the other day at The Spectator did not feature the familiar. melting Dorset. Instead I bought beef from Peter Greig's butchery at Piper's Farm in Devon. Whizzed efficiently from Cullompton, it was superb. Greig, however, is unafraid of the regulators — well, almost. He reads every EU hygiene directive relating to meat and compares it to our authorities' interpretation. He goes to Whitehall, lobbying Defra to make use of the derogations if a new regulation is inappropriate for artisan meat companies.
'Defra and the FSA overzealously regulate, because they have to cover their backs after the food scares,' he says; and it is true that virtually all hygiene regulations are created to solve problems in big business. 'They do not have the guts to stick their necks out and insist on interpreting directives to best serve the interests of artisan producers, too.' Every directive relating to food hygiene contains the phrase 'the competent authority may where necessary decide', a blatant loophole for every member state. 'All derogations are phrased this way,' says Greig. 'Brussels offers a barn door through which the French will drive a coach and horses, but our authorities seal it up with new regulations in order to solve problems in factories.'
Greig is seeking a special status for people, like him and his wife Henrietta, who employ just a few people to produce food by hand. 'Recognition for artisan status does not mean lower standards, but it would be an understanding that it exists and must be protected.' It is a fact that artisans have a great deal to lose if they exercise grubby practice; much, much more than the factory worker griping about his wages and conditions, picking his nose over the production line.
Businesses like Greig's are a fragment in a delicate chain inherent to regional economies: a cobweb of suppliers — family farms, small abattoirs, transporters, cheesernakers, butchers or perhaps bacon curers — all of them artisan in scale, all grappling with too much red tape, and paying heavily for it. At particular risk are the abattoirs, to which our authorities are unreasonably hostile, blaming the EC.
But it turns out that Brussels ministers are not against making special provisions for artisans. Bob Salmon, adviser to the Forum for Private Business, came back from Brussels recently having successfully negotiated special terms for small abattoirs over another legislation issue. 'The Commission will listen to reason if reasonable people put a clear case to them,' he said. 'We were able to influence the Commission at the stage when the regulation was being drafted.'
Back at Defra headquarters in Smith Square, however. the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Margaret Beckett, has different plans for beef. At a party to launch the ministry's support — amazingly — for regional food, she said, 'We have to be careful about putting regulation upon regulation so that people cannot function. But if you are asking me if we are in the business of keeping small abattoirs open, then the answer is no.' Secretary of State, let's have lunch.
The Spectator is registered as a Newspaper at the Post Office, LONDON. Published by The Spectator (ISM) Ltd, 55 DoPelity Street, Louden WCIN 2LL. Typesetting by Colourrnedia, 2nd Floor, Hill House. Highgate Hill, London NI9 5NA Printed and mailed by Wyndeham Heron. Malden. Essex.
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