Food Sourcing (Hansard, 25 July 2000)

§ Dr. Moonie

The supply of food for our armed forces is contracted to "3663". A key requirement of the contract, as with other procurement programmes, is that it should deliver value for money. 3663 are required to seek the best prices in the open market for the products we need. I am as keen, however, on seeing our Servicemen and women eating British products as I am for our contractor to secure the best value for money, and 3663 are required specifically to give full consideration to British products which we look to them to buy wherever they are competitive. 3663 are currently supplying a range of over 1,300 different products for our armed forces, including fresh, chilled and frozen commodities, a number of which are not made or grown in this country. The company advise that almost 1,000 of these are presently British.

We have given particular attention to meat procurement. We are currently sourcing 100 per cent. of our pork and 50 per cent. of our gammon and bacon from the UK, and I am pleased to announce that with effect from July our supplies of bacon and gammon have been 100 per cent. British sourced. Since the autumn of 1998 we have been supplying 100 per cent. British beef to our Service personnel based in the UK, following agreement by the EC to release British intervention beef, at competitive prices, for our use. Our supplies of British intervention beef will, however, start to run out progressively later this year and current market prices are likely to lead to a mix of British and imported beef for future supplies. We will, however, be working closely with farmers' representatives to ensure that we maximise the amount of British beef that can be supplied competitively. In the case of lamb, our efforts to source British products at competitive prices have so far been unsuccessful. The market has been unable to take up our offer of a substantial forward buy which we hoped might attract competitive prices. The main difficulties have included capacity issues (in particular butchery and blast freezing) and the narrow range of cuts we require, as well as price. Our efforts to source more British lamb are, however, continuing.