Trade bodies across the supply chain have urged the government to create a compensation scheme for losses incurred due to the French border closure.
Heads of food organisations – including the Food and Drink Federation, the Fresh Produce Consortium, the UK Food and Drink Exporters Association and the Chilled Food Association – have written an open letter to George Eustice, environment secretary, and Grant Shapps, transport secretary, calling for immediate action for businesses caught up in the blockade.
Calamitous decision
“The decision of the French authorities – to ban accompanied freight on 20 December 2020 – after the announcement by the UK government of the new strain of virus has caused a calamity for many food and drink businesses,” said the letter.
Why turkey farmers are sitting pretty this Christmas
A tradition started by Henry VIII lives on today, with the market for turkeys remaining robust this festive season
Paul Kelly runs his family s turkey farm in Essex
Once upon a time the sight of 250,000 turkeys being herded into London’s Smithfield meat market was a Christmas tradition. From the 1700s, every year farmers journeyed with their winged companions from the grainfields of Norfolk and Suffolk to the capital, accompanied by flying feathers and the sound of screeching and gobbling.
“Turkeys are nothing like chickens, they are very inquisitive and like sheep, you can drive them and herd them and that is a big part of the history of the turkey,” says Paul Kelly, owner of Kelly Turkeys in Essex.
At the end of
A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge flings open the windows of his darkened home, yelling to a boy passing by to purchase a prize turkey “twice the size of tiny Tim” to gift to his long-suffering employee Bob Cratchit and his family. In just a few sentences, Charles Dickens’ iconic tale helped to push the exotic turkey – which in Victorian times was far too expensive for an average family – to permanently replace the humble goose as the fashionable fowl of choice for Christmas lunch.
Only this holiday, most tables won’t be groaning under the weight of a humongous bird, child-size or otherwise. Thanks to the pandemic restrictions imposed this year, most people’s Christmases have been downsized, and so have their appetites: 2020 is officially the year of the tiny turkey.