Thanks to Chefs, UK Food Industry ‘Runs A Fowl’ of Ready Supply

Not one, but three stories revolving around Jaime Oliver this week.

In the United Kingdom, celebrity chefs have crazy, mad followings. I mean what in America Oprah can do for a book sale, chefs there can do the same for food. For instance, when Gordon Ramsay made a live meal on television where people where to cook along with him a month or so ago the supermarkets in England ran out, completely ran out of the meal’s ingredients. So when chefs talk there, people follow in overwhelming droves.

With this in mind and therefore in the better watch out what you say department, telvision chefs Jaime Oliver and — even more so — Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have been pushing for free range chickens so hard, people listened — big time. Slight problem: there’s not enough to meet the demand. In short people have literally stripped many stores bare of whole free-range chicken and this had caused major repurcussions in the food industry there:

From Farmer’s Weekly Interactive UK:

what was worrying was that the free range cuts were imported from France. Such is demand that retailers are being forced to look further a field, which will have serious consequences on the British sector if it becomes a long-term fix, as highlighted by the NFU.

So has the push resulting in consumers trading up to imported free range products inadvertently increase food miles and threaten British companies? After all, there was still plenty of high quality, intensively produced British chicken on the shelves.

The TV chefs don’t understand that the UK industry cannot increase supplies like turning on a tap.

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