Gordon Calls for Action on Unseasonal Menus

Gordon Ramsey has today called for restaurants to be forced to use only seasonal fruit and veg or face being fined. He has called Gordon Brown to bring in tough new legislation that would see an end to un-seasonal menus and crack down on the amount of imported food, currently relied on by British chefs.

Instead, all menus should be locally sourced as well as seasonal.

Chefs who failed to adhere to this would be heavily fined and possibly have their "license" removed.

Whilst I agree that these kinds of menus generally taste better (food always tastes better during peak season) and supporting local producers better than fuelling cheap imports, legislation seems to be an over-reaction and hard to inforce.

The money needed to implement and enforce the proposed "licensing" scheme would be better spent on educating people and improving their knowledge and palates into making more informed choices; supporting small producers and improving their relationships with suppliers; providing funding for regular farmer's markets in under-resourced areas so that people have an opportunity to buy local, seasonal produce instead of having to rely on their local supermarket; encouraging supermarkets to pay local farmers a fair price and promote these items properly in store.

Comments

wanderer said…
I have just spent nine weeks travelling by truck from Nairobi to Cape Town. There is a heck of a lot wrong with Africa, not least its history of despotic dictators. However, apart from minerals and tourism, their only source of foreign currency is the export of food. This is hampered by subsidies and protectionism in the EU and the USA. Go to Malawi, primarily an agrarian economy and see how people survive (barely) on just 400 USD a year. Mr. Ramsay is just looking at this from his own perspective.

David
Hi David, Thanks for the comment and sorry it's taken me so long to get this on here. You're probably more informed on the subsidy issue than me but I agree that we need to support poorly paid farmers everywhere.

Nicki

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