PLANS have been drawn up to safeguard Cumbria's thriving local meat industry from being strangled by bureaucracy.

The recent success of farmers selling meat direct to the public is being threatened by legislation to stop butchers cutting meat for sale anywhere but in their own shops.

Not only is the European legislation threatening meat supplies at farmers markets, it will also stop a crucial source of income for some butchers.

One North Lancashire butcher has already been forced to stop cutting meat for farmers markets because the law says a fully licensed cutting room has to be used for the preparation of meat for sale elsewhere.

Liz Clarke of Denney's butchers in the Lyth Valley said she generated three-quarters of her income by cutting meat for farmers to sell themselves.

The legislation has been in place since 2000, but local authority Environmental Health inspectors have had an understanding towards farmers and have applied a light touch in implementing it.

Now though, the Food Standards Agency is insisting it is strictly applied.

In the case of Denney's, that means that one Orton farmer, John Noble, who would regularly bring two pigs together to Denney's abattoir, then had them slaughtered and cut together, leaving one for sale at Denney's and taking one away for sale at the farmers' market, can now no longer

do so.

"It is absolutely ridiculous," said Liz.

It leaves meat sellers at farmers markets facing the prospect of sending their meat to be cut at licensed commercial cutting rooms miles away, she explained.

That, said Denney's customer Peter Woof from Stainton Meats, of Storth End Farm, Kendal, goes against the ethos of the farmers markets and defeats the object of trying to improving traceability and cutting down on food miles.

Peter, a regular at Kendal farmers' market since it began, explained that, sending animals to larger abattoirs with licensed cutting rooms meant it would be less likely that the meat he got back had actually come from the animals he sent. "They say that this is necessary for improving health and safety, but it's ridiculous - if the meat is fit to

be sold in the butcher's shop, why isn't it fit to be sold in a farmers' market?"

That measure is designed to improve hygiene standards between abattoir and cutting room abattoir but is at odds with the Government's backing of the Curry report, which endorses local food, niche markets and direct marketing.

However, Cumbria County Council's Made in Cumbria initiative has hatched a plan to deal with the problem.

Sarah Williams of Made in Cumbria said a group of like-minded producers had been formed and was bidding for funding to help Denney's meet the requirements to become a licensed cutting room such as having separate cutting rooms and separate fridges for meat destined for sale in the

shop and meat set for sale elsewhere.

There is even a plan to use the new licensed cutting rooms as a place to train chefs to cut their own meat - so they can buy direct from farms for restaurants in the area.

In the meantime, Made in Cumbria hoped to get the FSA to allow Liz and other butchers in Cumbria some leeway before the legislation stops them supplying meat for farmers markets, mail order and the like.

Backing the initiative, Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins said there were no such problems in other EU member states and he branded it another example of Britain "gold-plating" legislation.

"The strange thing is that farmers are doing exactly what they are being asked to do and now the Government seems to be working against them."

May 2, 2003 14:30