Opinion : Eat British, drink and be merry 17/12/04

Fed up with people knocking British farmers, under-valuing great British food and taking the countryside for granted?

Then here’s your opportunity to do something. FW has teamed up with Essex producer Guy Smith to produce the poster that appears on our inside back cover.

It spells out 10 top reasons to eat food from British farms. They will be familiar to farming families, but here’s your chance to persuade other consumers about the strength of our case.

So, please take this opportunity to cut out the poster and arrange for it to be displayed in your local post office, shop or village hall and notice boards. Doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries also make good places to site the poster – in fact anywhere where consumers can view the poster and absorb its message.

Please feel free to photocopy it and distribute as many copies as possible throughout your local community. Alternatively, you can download copies, free of charge from our website (www.fwi.co.uk/eatBritish).

A free booklet, supporting this campaign is also available, as our Farmlife Section explains.

There’s no better time to highlight all the reasons to buy British in the run up to Christmas with its traditional focus on festive food and drink. Farmers and country people know that farming feeds the nation and supports a beautiful British countryside which is so important not only for its amenity value but also the national economy.

So, let’s share one of this country”s best-kept secrets. Now more than ever before, as EU support becomes more transparent, we need to join together to promote the best of British food and farms.

Here’s a simple, free way in which everyone who cares about our countryside can help this Christmas.