14/10/2013 Inside Out North West

Hello and welcome to the show. Tonight, we are in Southport for a

special programme all about the food industry. We'll be asking whether we

can be sure that what we are buying is what it says on the tin. Tonight,

we look at a unique type of food production in the Ribble Valley. It

sounds like self policing, would you describe it as that? Overall, I

would say yes. But we are proud of what we do. A food critic looks at

why food crimes are still happening. Whilst the majority of the food is

safe, food fraud is an established crime and it is all about money. I

go out with one of Southport's last shrimpers. We will see how we are

getting on. Good luck. The horse meat scandal earlier this

year forced us to think about where our food comes from and what is in

it how confident can we be that the food we eat is what we think it is.

One part of our region has experience of what it takes to claw

back consumer confidence by introducing a unique system of food

production and supply and it's based on good old`fashioned trust, but

does it work? We sent Jacey Normand to investigate.

The Ribble Valley is simply breath`taking, consisting of two

market towns and 44 villages all set in this relatively unspoilt

picturesque backdrop. It's also home to some of the north west's most

acclaimed chef's and food producers. It's difficult to imagine anything

could interrupt the idyllic beauty of this part of our region.

Horse meat may have been the scandal of this year, but back in 2001 this

part of the world was devastated by foot and mouth. Food producers had

to do something to salvage their industry's reputation and one of the

ways they did that was by increasing transparency in the food chain. To

better understand this journey, I'm taking a trip into the heart of the

Ribble Valley. We were registered in 1999, but...

Amongst those affected were Ian O'Reilly and Emma Robinson. They run

Gazegill Organic Farm. It's one of a handful of certified organic farms

in the country. It's been in Emma's family for 500 years. They narrowly

escaped foot and mouth, but still it almost cost them everything. Their

farm was on lock down and their stock's value plummeted overnight.

They were shooting cows in the meadow in front of our house. It

came very close to us and we kept thinking today is the day. Are we

going to get taken out today? The whole thing was heartbreaking `

empty fields, empty farms. Like so many farmers at that time,

their survival depended on diversification. Today, Ian and Emma

are more passionate than ever that food should travel the fewest

possible miles, be reared naturally and never be overly processed. They

also strongly advocate animal welfare. We build a lot of

relationships with the animals and pigs are quite powerful, they are

all muscle and teeth and jaw last thing you want is a boisterous pig.

Give them a mass arch and that way they get used to being handled. She

loves this. Everything from birth is traceable.

Going further into the feed, the animal feed. We can trace it back to

the farm it came from, the field it was grown in. When an animal is

born, it's identified. When it's taken to the end of its life, it's

processed and it ends up back here sold in the shop. The problem comes

when you break that chain and animals become batches of meat. Is

all this going to be... It seems a huge undertaking. We hope so, we're

hoping to get 100% of the milk being sold locally.

Gazegill Farm is part of the Ribble Valley Food trail. Set up in 2008,

it aims to transform our thinking about food by emphasising trust and

provenance. To be a part of it, you have to meet a range of criteria and

show a commitment to producing, sourcing and consuming everything

locally. So, you take provenance to a new level by growing stuff in the

grounds. You are in the middle of the orchard, you have plans. Chef

Nigel Haworth has two restaurants on the trail and is also one of the

original champions of the idea. Buying at source and building a

relationship is how people did it in the good old days. By understanding

each other and by giving each other a fair deal and by re`investing in

the economics of an area. If there is something I can't get say I need

to use French truffles for something, I won't say I'll never

use them but there are English truffles and mushrooms and lamb. We

have incredible beef and lamb. Why should I want to go anywhere else

but here? But just because it's grown and

sourced on our doorsteps, how can we be certain the food is safe and is

it still subjected to the same checks and balances as everywhere

else? We will do a routine inspection. The premises are...

James Russell is head of Environmental Health at Ribble

Valley Council. What we do find is we go through an

audit trail and we follow that where they say they come from, we ask for

receipts, we know the other businesses involved and we obviously

do food hygiene inspection of those premises as well. It all comes

together locally. Do you record temperatures? Can you show me

please? What does the inspection involved?

It's a detailed process, what we're looking at is the whole food

business in its entirety, we look at everything, but there are three main

areas we are targeting. One is the structure and cleanliness of the

premises, make sure that's right. We're looking at the food hygiene

practice so that's the way food is prepared and handled, stored,

purchased, brought in and we're also looking for a confident management

side of it ` that they are doing what they should be doing. The fact

they have a food trail here, does having a food trail make your job

easier? We find less and less issues when we do inspections so, yes, it

does make it slightly easier. Stringent checks and inspections

like the ones carried out by environmental health are, of course,

important, but to be part of the food trail it's just as important to

get a positive review from your fellow food`producing peers. Well,

I'm here at Cowman's Butcher's in Clitheroe to meet Cliff Cowburn.

Cliff, it sounds a lot like self`policing, would you describe it

as that? There are checks, but overall, I'd say yes. We're all very

proud of what we do. It's important standards are maintained, we all

know where we buy the meat from, the produce from and who we supply. We

cannot let the customer down. They have the trust and faith in you. It

is criminal to abuse that trust. It's Saturday morning and Nigel is

visiting Leagram's Organic Dairy. You have cut through the cheese now.

Three times. Is it important that you limit that to a certain number

of cuts? Like many of the Ribble Valley's local chefs, he likes to

know where his cheese is coming from and believes having such a close

relationship with producers is an integral part of creating the

perfect menu. Dealing with the food producers has enriched my life. You

learn about food, what it takes for a person to go out and grow

cauliflowers, be with animals seven days a week. It gives you an inkling

into their lifestyle. The chef is a conduit, it's helped to bring the

farmers and chefs into the kitchen and have a look at what's happening

to their produce in the kitchen. It looks very delicate. It is at this

stage. So much flavour even after such a short period of time. After

carefully selecting the right ingredients, Nigel invites me into

his kitchen at North Cote. I recognise the cheese, where has

everything else come from? We have a local free range egg. He's got

something in mind he wants to make from Faye's cheese, but the question

we all want to know the answer to is can you really taste the difference?

All I have done is melted that cheese. There it is, that cheese

that we know and love. Then we pop the egg on the side there and then

we put our little tomato on there which we have dried with some garlic

and thyme. I you liking this? I am, it looks that even I could cook this

and that is saying something. It would be a miracle.

That is delicious. You can taste the cheese, it's really lovely and

amazing to think that it's come from a ten`mile radius. Yeah, and it just

shows you that you don't need to go far away to get absolutely quality

ingredients but the simplicity of that dish I think is the key ` but

buy locally, gain some knowledge of where your local suppliers are,

don't just shop on a phone or on the internet and really build

relationships with local people that helps the local economy and makes us

all happy, I think. When it comes to self`policing and

trust, the Ribble Valley Food trail is a model being looked at in other

parts if the world from Northern Ireland to Tazmania. Whether or not

it will be rolled out in other parts of the UK remains to be seen, but

here at least, going back to basics, seems to be working.

Coming up, I discovered just how much hard work goes into preparing

potted shrimp. We have five trays. How long could that take you? I am

mangling it at the moment. Given the rise in reports of food

fraud, it is no wonder there is confusion about some of the products

on the shelves. We asked this food critic to act `` `` ask who is

policing our food? Spaghetti bolognaise is one of the

nation's favourite dishes, and unsurprisingly so. What could be

better than some lovely beef simmered in some extra virgin olive

oil, served over pasta made with free range eggs? But hang on a

moment, what if the beef is some old pony that should be racing in

the 3:10 at Kempton? What if the free range eggs are actually

captured in a cage? And what if the extra virgin olive oil is rather

less innocent that it claims? All of these items and many more have

been the subject of food fraud over the past few years. So how

confident can we be in our food? How can we be certain there won't

be another horse meat scandal? How can we be sure that our food does

what it says on the tin? What we've seen are failings in the system

with more fraud and less testing of our food. And a report just

published by the National Audit Office has underlined the problems.

It says the government failed to spot the possibility of horse being

passed off as beef earlier this year. There's confusion over the

role of the Food Standards Agency which is in charge of food

regulation. And it says that detection of fraud is falling short

of what we as consumers should expect. It's our local Trading

Standards who are the food police on the ground doing the checks. And

drastic cuts to their budgets is putting the whole system of

detecting food fraud at risk. I'm just going to take these three and

do some checks on these. To understand the challenges Trading

Standards face I'm spending the day with food enforcement officer Ayse

Singh. We're visiting an award winning yogurt factory in Suffolk.

220 grams. Is the packaging only four grams on these? I thought it

was 12 grams. Because this is the sheet they've got out. They've got

the wrong sheet out. The consumer needs to know exactly what they're

getting and what Trading Standards are looking at here is a

discrepancy between weights. It says it's both 200 grams and 220

grams. Looks like it's just an oversight, but they have to get it

right, so the consumer knows what they're getting. Ayse's team have

had two successful prosecutions recently. They found out consumers

were being ripped off by companies selling jam and sauce that didn't

contain what they claimed on the label. But the problem is across

England there are now fewer officers like them on the hunt for

dodgy food. Against this, reports of fraud are rising. In the first

six months of this year there have been 812 reports of food fraud

reported to the Food Standards Agency. That's an increase of a

third on this time last year. Trading Standards are also

reporting an increase. And yet their budgets nationally are

reckoned to be down a third and the number of samples they're sending

for testing are down by almost a quarter. I think there is a crisis

in the regulatory services, in Trading Standards. We've lost a

third of our inspectorate. Talking to colleagues recently, they're

expecting to slash by a further 50 percent in some cases. And I think

we now start to see the picture, that in some cases throughout the

UK we'll have no trading standard service in three years time. With

local authorities reporting cases of fraud up by two thirds last year

and limited resources Trading Standards have to try and predict

problems. Back at the dairy they're taking a sample of milk away for

routine testing. And one sample is the one I'm going to be sending

away for testing, one sample is going to be retained by the

business for them to sort of store until the results come back. Poor

weather has meant milk yields are down this year. Dairies across the

county are being tested to make sure milk isn't being watered down.

Recessions also make fraud more attractive. So officers on the

ground are very busy. And so is the Food Standards Agency. It's in

overall charge of our food safety. Their Fraud Branch has never been

busier. The FSA has been repeatedly criticised as being not fit for

purpose. It was accused of acting too slowing during the horse meat

scandal. So is the current system tough enough? Let's put these

things into perspective, in relation to the horse meat incident.

In the prior year there were over 90,000 samples collected. There

were over 20,000 authenticity tests. 8,000 of those were on meat

products. There have been several areas that we've been targeting for

a number of years. It just wasn't necessarily in the public

consciousness. But a former head of Authenticity at the Food Standards

Agency told us we are now less well equipped to uncover fraud. Dr Mark

Woolfe spent nine years in charge and he believes budget cuts are

undermining the system. The FSA rely basically on Local Authority

results. And obviously local authorities now are under financial

pressure and therefore the amount of sampling that they're doing has

been quite severely reduced. So I think the whole system is really

quite severely weakened. It's clearly a challenge in the current

financial environment for local authorities to do the work they

need to do. But the FSA has invested considerably more in this

area in the last year to boost their resources and their efforts.

And it's clear that the system is detecting problems. But it's going

to be challenging in the future, the threats will also keep evolving.

And the service that's there to protect consumers will also

continue to evolve as things change. Two weeks after our visit to the

diary, the samples of milk have been tested. Everything was OK, the

sample of milk had not been watered down. But I did discover another

problem in the system. The number of public testing laboratories has

shrunk dramatically over the past decade. Down from 20 to just nine.

It's another sign that less testing of our food is taking place. But

food fraud has never been more attractive to criminals. A Food

Standards Agency report lists all the products that it thinks could

be or have been the subject of fraud and it's quite a list. Honey,

wine, fruit juice, spices, olive oil. But should all testing be paid

for by the public purse? What about the supermarkets? After all, we buy

most of our food from them. Tesco were one of those found to be

selling products containing horse meat. I've come to their lab in

Wolverhampton to find out what they're doing now. You've got

thousands of products in Tesco, how do you decide what to test? We take

a balanced view of where the biggest risk might be that

something could go wrong. So we could be telling consumers there's

chicken in the product, we need to be sure it's chicken and not turkey.

Since horse meat was found in some of the products they were selling,

Tesco say they now carry out eight times more DNA testing. Crystal

ball moment, do you think something like the horse meat scandal could

happen again? Our sole objective is giving our customers the best

confidence we can in the products that we produce. To ensure that

that kind of activity, if it were there, we would catch it. And

because our supply chains are shorter, we understand them better,

we've got better controls and testing's stronger than it ever was

before. That fraud should not happen again. While Tesco are

confident they've learnt lessons, the rest of the food surveillance

system is under increasing pressure. The big question is, can it cope?

Whilst the majority of our food is safe and what it says it is, food

fraud is an established crime. And it's all about money. And where

there's money to be made, criminals will be attracted to food fraud.

The thing is, food is a global industry now, it's complex and hard

to police. Making sure it is what it says it is, is very, very tough

indeed. Traditionally, no trip to the

seaside is complete without eating some seafood. And here in Southport,

they've been shrimping off the coast for generations. Sadly, it's

an industry that's now in decline, as I found out when I spent the day

with the resort's last shrimpers. It's a fair old drive out to the

sea, but we've come in search of something quite special ` Southport

shrimps. I've joined one of the resort's last shrimpers, Christian

Peet. His family have been shrimping off the coast here for

generations, but now there's only a handful of shrimpers left.

Christian and his wife Tuk are out in all weathers, hoping for a good

catch. What is it about this coastline that makes it so good for

the shrimps? Well, we've got the River Ribble on that side and the

Mersey on that side of us. The shrimps wash out the rivers and

they settle here at Southport. The sand's very clean, so we get a

really nice, clean brown shrimp. The quality of the brown shrimps

here is second to none, they are absolutely fantastic. There's been

a big decline in shrimping in the North West. The channels are

silting up and there are fewer shrimps around to catch. But

Christian's determined to do his best. We've just tied the net up

now so we're going to start moving in a minute. And we'll put this net

out and this net will actually sit up like that as it drags along the

sea bed. So it's almost like an envelope? Yes, it is, really. As

the net drags along, the shrimps will actually jump. And they should

hopefully jump into the net, along with other fish and maybe a few

crabs and various other creatures as well. Why is it still so low

tech, is it to keep your costs down? You don't really need

anything fancy to catch shrimps. As you can see, as long as the wheels

are moving and you can drag along the sea bed, you can catch the

shrimps. But it always has been and always will be a cottage industry.

And we're basically keeping that cottage industry going at the

moment. We're going to pull the net in now, see how we're getting on!

Oh, it's all happening! Good luck! We've got ourselves a plastic

bucket! We've got a plastic bucket, but not many shrimps. They look

like a bug or an insect when they come out like this. I'm used to

seeing them curled up. Yeah, they do. At this time of year they are

reasonably small. This one is slightly bigger. But they are

absolutely beautiful to eat. The taste is very sweet, as we'll find

out later on when we cook them. They really are a treat this time

of year. And is most of the rest of that no good? No good, we throw it

back in the sea. Right, OK. Luckily for Christian, Tuk's from a farming

family in Thailand so is used to hard work. I love it. Do you? I

can't see many women would enjoy it, day in, day out. You get used to it

when you do it every day. That's what I was doing in Thailand so I

get used to it. In the winter, when it's freezing cold, what's it like

out here on a day like that? You know, January, minus two? Cold!

Freezing cold! But is there something you'd rather be doing? To

be honest, in any job I do, I love working. Anything, you know.

Potting, shrimping, peeling. Cleaning! I love everything I do.

You're a one in a million! Then we spin round in a circle when we get

into the corner. Tuk and Christian may be among the last shrimpers in

Southport, but Gerald Rimmer can remember when there would be at

least 40 men working the beach with their horse and carts. Well, I

started when I got demobbed in 1949, from the Navy. And my father was

shrimping at the same time. So with my demob money, I bought a horse

and I started shrimping. Did you enjoy it? Oh, I enjoyed it. What is

it about shrimping? There's a bit of solitude on your own, that's

what I liked about it. The horse took you out? Yeah and he could

find his way back, even if it was foggy. It sounds ridiculous, but I

carried a compass in the horse and cart. But more often than not, it

would get you off. Tell me a bit about what the community was like

with 40 horses and carts out there? Well, it was great. It was like a

troop going in the middle of the night. With candle lamps on. Most

of the old people ` what I thought was old ` in the village picked

shrimps, cos it was extra money. It was a cottage industry. And they

did it in their own homes. And is there a sadness that it's an

industry that's seen a decline? Oh, it has declined, yes. There's no

market stalls now, as such. And if you buy them in the supermarket

they're very expensive. But having been out, I understand why they are

expensive, cos it's hard work. It is hard work. It's time consuming.

But still a great taste. Oh yeah, great taste, yeah. Back at

Christian's house he boils up the shrimps and lays them out on trays

to cool. So that's a good morning's work. It's the start of the season,

so you weren't expecting a miracle. But five trays. Commercially,

what's that worth to you? By the time we've peeled them and you've

eaten a few of them, we might scrape ?100 out of it, something

like that. But we don't expect a lot of shrimps this time of year.

But I've more than enough for a sandwich so we'll settle for that.

Fingers crossed, on a really good day, what could you do? On a really

good day I would expect to catch ten times as much as that. Wow.

Maybe more. Incredibly, all the shrimps are peeled by hand. Is

there an art to this? How do I do it? Squeeze the head like that. And

pull the tail out. Now squeeze a little bit here and pull it out.

That's it. We've got five trays to get through. How long could that

take you? Cos they're really small shrimps, it might take us a little

bit longer than normal. And to be honest, I'm mangling most of mine!

Two to three hours. Really? So we're going to take the shrimps.

This is what we caught yesterday, they're nice and fresh. After

they're peeled, the shrimps are them cooked in butter, lemon juice

and a special blend of spices. It's a closely guarded family recipe. So

Tuk's a demon at this as well. But you do the finishing touch. I put

the butter on. I finish them off by putting a nice seal of butter on

the top of the pots. Let's see if you've got a steady hand. Where do

they go from here? These potted shrimps now will go to various

restaurants throughout the North West. Various wholesalers, one or

two fishmongers. We supply some really good restaurants all over

the North West, really. It's hard work, but there's a lot to like

about it as well. Yes, it's a job that I enjoy and for me, life's not

just about money. It's about finding something that you enjoy

doing. And we both really enjoy what we do and we're very proud of

what we do. And there was no way I was going to leave without trying

some freshly potted shrimps. So, the end product. There you go. What

have we got here? We've got some fresh Southport samphire grass,

which I picked off the foreshore and I blanced just a couple of

minutes in some boiling water. Got some fresh watercress and some of

teh shrimps that I've just cooked. Served on a toasted crumpet with a

lemon wedge. Nice and basic, nice and simple. But I'm sure you'll

agree, tastes fantastic. Nutmeg? It's gorgeous. Do you like it? Do

you know what? This is absolutely beautiful and I appreciate it more,

because I appreciate all the hard work that goes into it. There is a

lot of hard work, as you've seen today. But the end product is worth

it. Fantastic. Good, I'm glad you like it. I really do. That was such

a lovely day and the shrimps tasted great. Now, don't forget, you can

catch us again on the BBC iplayer. But we're back next Monday at 7:30

on BBC1. Until then, goodbye.Next week, a special friendship. This is

a blessed