Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

livestock pigs
British pig producers face oblivion
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A 20% drop in the number of skilled butchers working in British abattoirs and boning halls has led to a 25% fall in the number of pigs being bought in by the slaughtering sector. The result is that British pig farmers are running out of room to keep unsold pigs and face the prospect of culling thousands of healthy animals.
The National Pig Association chief executive Zoe Davies is already warning that most of the British pig industry will be out of business by next summer. From its conversations with members, the NPA can confirm that at least 16,000 healthy pigs have already been culled in recent weeks, but the figure is almost certainly the tip of a very grisly iceberg.

The UK government has offered support packages for the processing sector in a bid to restore slaughtering capacity but none of this will stop pig farmers going out of business. Farming minister George Eustice is on the record saying that he can’t see what else he can do that might help pig producers stay in business.
NPA ceo Zoe Davies is frustrated by DEFRA’s lack of  foresight. “If that’s the way they want it, then that’s the way it will go. We will just see droves of people going out business, there won’t be a British pig sector going forward, or it will be massively reduced, and we will just end up importing all the product from European Union.”
Davies estimates that the pig crisis cost producers GBP 130 million during the first six months of 2021 and she is seeing farmers leaving the pig sector and farming.

The operational impact on the slaughtering and processing sector of losing large numbers of highly qualified non-UK EU staff is not a new concern. The issue was raised in the House of Lords report number 15 published during the 2017-8 session of Parliament. (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldeucom/15/15.pdf)

cultivation olives
Dietary gold on trees
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pic Wikimedia Commons

Today (Friday November 26) is World Olive Tree Day, as growers in the northern hemisphere prepare to pick the next crop of olives. More than two thirds of the world’s olive trees grow in the Mediterranean basin and survive thanks to their deep roots. Younger trees planted in more recent groves will often be irrigated until their roots have reached cooler, damp rock formations.

Olive oil ranges in colour from green to gold.

Olives are a winter crop: starting in November unripe green olives are gathered and pressed for distinctively strong, green oil. As the winter progresses, the olives darken and ripen, the oil changing to gold as the flavour softens with the fruit. The harvest continues into February and March, depending on varieties and locations.

Traditional olive-picking techniques needed the olives to be hard enough not to break up as pickers beat the trees with heavy sticks. Today, large groves are harvested with a mechanical arm attached to the trunk of the tree. The tree is then shaken vigorously, emptying the fruit onto large sheets spread out to catch the crop. The process is stressful for the tree, but is quicker than the stick-wielding villagers. The remaining winter months are a time of recovery.

Once picked, olives are fragile. Away from the tree, the olives start to accumulate free oleic acid as they oxidise during the different stages of processing. Only when the oil is extracted and stored under nitrogen can the oxidation be halted. The largest pressing plants, typically in Spain, where batches are consolidated and have more time to oxidise, face the prospect of minimising the effects as best they can.

Olives picked for the table have an additional constraint: unlike olives bound for pressing, every table olive needs to be visually perfect. To remove the stones from olives, the flesh needs to be firm and the olive must be unripe. To produce black pitted olives, green olives are treated to make the flesh black and then the stones can be removed mechanically. By the time an olive has fully ripened and turned black naturally, it is no longer possible to remove the stones mechanically, since the soft flesh just falls apart. The taste, however, is exquisite.

olives
Olive oil grades
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Olive oil is a highly-prized commodity, for a very wide range of reasons. As a key ingredient of many elements in the Mediterranean diet, it is a pivotal component of Mediterranean cuisine. Across the region, household use of olive oil would be counted in dozens of litres a year.

Spain is the world’s biggest producer and user of olive oil: collectively, domestic consumers buy tens of thousands of tonnes every month. The country usually produces over a million tonnes of olive oil a year, much of it shipped to packers all around the world.

Greek olives are harvested in small quantities and pressed within hours of coming off the tree. Domestic Italian production is an even lower tonnage. Italian blenders are very skilled at procuring the right mix of flavours and colours of oil from all over the world to blend in bulk. The bottles were often marked “Prodotto in Italia” (“produced in Italy”) but this delightfully vague ambiguity was outlawed by the European Commission.

Pressing yields anything up to 20% by weight in oil. This ranges from the cheap and cheerful institutional canteen cooking oil, olive pomace oil, through to single estate, single variety specialist extra virgin olive oils containing less than 0.08% in free oleic acid. Like wine, the estate bottled oils are like an exclusive club: they are as distinctive as the groves they came from.

The next grade, virgin olive oil, will have less than 2% free oleic acid, which will be reflected in the taste. The different grades of virgin olive oil are too delicate to be suitable for deep frying, which is the main use for olive pomace oil. Pomace is the paste that is left over from the mechanical pressing process used to extract virgin oil grades. Due to its lower moisture content, olive pomace oil is better suited to high temperature applications.

retail
Filling their boots
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UK food retailers have filled their boots selling olive oil. These days they are taking a gross margin of between 30% and 40% on own label olive oil, somewhat less on branded products. Own label is more profitable because the retailer can control every last detail of the specification. But with today’s rising costs, the retailers have to curb their expectations. Besides, if Aldi and Lidl can sell extra virgin olive oil at around three to four quid a bottle, the mainstream retailers cannot afford to exaggerate their pricing.

During the 1990s the major multiples were skimming off 60p and more from every pound spent on own label extra virgin olive oil sold on a rapidly-growing market. This naked greed went unchallenged, since UK consumers trusted retailers to supply a grade of oil that merited the price being charged. No chance.

The sales director of a UK oil packer told me of his experience in those days with an own-label project with one of the big four. “I sourced an attractive bottle and filled it with a reasonable grade of extra virgin oil.” The multiple concerned stood to earn 66p in the pound on the SKU. “When I presented it to them, they turned round and said ‘fill it with shit and we’ll make 75%.’ At which point I put the samples back in my case and walked out.”

revised November 27 2021.

Europe France retail
Knock, knock…
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The French finance ministry announced the other week that it had raided a number of multiple food retailer head  offices and some of their suppliers. In a terse staement dated November 9, the competition authority warned that it is not going to identify the retailers concerned and will not risk compromising the investigation.

In similar raids in the past, inspectors of the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF) have carried out raids without warning and gathered thousands of invoices and other documents within 12 hours. Known as the “répression des fraudes” the DGCCRF has a justified reputation for being ruthlessly efficient.

Europe retail Switzerland
P… R… no Q!
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Switzerland’s biggest retail cooperative, Migros, is eliminating supermarket checkout queues. Customers using the Migros “subitoGo” application can scan their purchases on their smartphone and leave the store without further ado.

The system will be tried out at 80 outlets and rolled out if it proves successful. The software also links into any shopping list that might have been prepared before leaving home; fewer chances of leaving the store without a full complement of shopping.  SubitoGo combines the Italian word for suddenly and Go.

foraging fungi
Pick what you know
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Artwork copyright: Helena Barcraft-Barnes 2021

In the late 1970s, Richard Mabey sparked a passion for wild food with his bestselling book Food For Free. The title said it all and cleverly encapsulated a town dweller’s view of nature as an endless source of food.

This is overstated. Of course, there are occasional gluts, but these are uncommon. Realistically, foraging is a source of garnishes rather than whole meals: carrying a basket is no guarantee of coming home laden with wild food to order. It is however a pleasant addition to an extended walk, taking in some of the seasonal colour.

Armed with a copy of Food For Free and George Kibby’s mushroom guide, some 45 years ago I started collecting wild fungi and other crops as I learnt about their characteristics and locations. To anyone who asks if it is safe to pick fungi, I have a standard answer: pick only what you know and walk past the rest. By learning how to positively identify one species of mushroom you can be sure that you will recognise it even if it turns up in a fresh location.

In time, by adding more species to the positive list, you can build a repertoire of reliable fungi: walking past the rest will save time in the field and, if the opportunity occurs, you can always pick specimens to identify upon your return home. Just don’t mix the unidentified specimens with your supper without first making sure that they are an edible variety.

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to encounter a paddock full of giant puffballs in Shropshire, most of which were skull-sized and some of which were bigger than a beach ball. On another occasion I spotted a cauliflower fungus the size of a large hen; when walking alongside canals in the Black Country I would routinely pick wild celery, which is widespread and as large as the cultivated variety, with a strong preference for damp soil. But, apart from the wild celery, wild food has been a bonus rather than a reliable or significant addition to the menu.