LOCAL businesses are urging customers to buy fully traceable food following the horsemeat contamination scandal.

Revelations about the mislabelling of meat products have highlighted the lengthy and complex supply chain of the ingredients used in some cheap British food products.

But North East food producers say customers buying from them have the benefit of knowing exactly where their food comes from ... and it’s all far simpler.

Carolyn Graham runs local company Greenbrae from Newton Farm, near Harbottle, Northumberland.

The company, which sells top-quality, traditionally-reared beef, lamb, mutton and rare breed pork, has a “farm to fork” philosophy, meaning every item is fully traceable.

Carolyn, 51, who runs the business with her husband George, 55, said: “All our animals are born and reared on our farm to ensure full traceability, a local abattoir is used for minimum stress and all meat is hung to enhance flavour and tenderness.

“We grow everything on the farm. We don’t buy anything in. We take the animals to the abattoir ourselves and pick them up ourselves.

“The kind of stock we have are traditional breeds so when we get it back we know it’s our animal.

“Traceability is really quite important. It means you know exactly where the meat has been raised and that’s our philosophy.

“We can tell the customer about the product right down to the animal’s ear tag number, date of birth and when it was slaughtered.”

Jane Hogan, chief executive of Taste North East, the region’s food and drink membership organisation, said: “Not only does eating local meat support local businesses in the region you live, it is also tastier and healthier.

“Meat sourced directly from the farm does not have any water pumped into it to make it look fatter, it doesn’t have any preservatives added to make it last longer and you can rest assured that the livestock have been treated in a humane and healthy way.”

The horsemeat scandal began last month when Irish authorities discovered horsemeat in some burgers stocked by a number of UK supermarket chains.

Supermarket giant Tesco, frozen food firm Findus and budget store Aldi were supplied with products containing horse meat by Comigel, based in France.

Some Findus frozen beef lasagne were found to have up to 100% horsemeat in them.

The crisis has spread across Europe as details of the convoluted supply chain in the meat industry emerged.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK has ordered food businesses to carry out tests on all processed beef products for the presence of horse meat and pork.

The FSA has also ordered an audit of all horse-producing abattoirs in the UK as the questions about the scandal continue to grow.

MP’s ‘Buy Local’ message

HEXHAM MP Guy Opperman has also backed the ‘Buy Local’ campaign.

Mr Opperman says good local butchers can be trusted to know where meat comes from.

He declared: "The best way to know what you’re eating is to buy fresh British meat, ideally from a good local butcher who will know where it was sourced."

Mr Opperman added: "The truth is you can only squeeze down the price of meat so far before quality is compromised.

"Local farmers I speak to in Tynedale have long been sceptical of this very cheap processed meat coming from the continent.

"It turns out they were right to be concerned. The simplest way to know you are eating good quality, safe beef is to look for the Red Tractor label and buy British."