Is your butcher getting their meat from CHINA? Farmer reveals why hard-up Brit meat cutters are being pressured to purchase low-cost produce from hundreds of miles away

A British farmer has revealed why butchers are flogging meat from China after a mum was furious to find her farm-shop cuts were sourced from thousands of miles away. 

Ben Aveling, who runs a farm shop in Northamptonshire, raises all his meat with wife Vicky on the family farm.

Mr Aveling does all his own butchery and only buys in local produce if he is ever short on a product.

But he explained that is not across the board as some struggling business owners may rely on bringing meat from abroad, such as chicken breasts, as a way to ‘get people through the door’ as it can be cheaper.

‘It’s a difficult one, really, because you think when you go to a certain butcher that you’re buying local produce but most of the time, you don’t really know’, he told MailOnline.

All meat imports from China must have an official health certificate which confirms that the meat is safe for human consumption and meets UK standards.

Mr Aveling said: ‘A butcher will try their best but like I said, high street butchers are struggling, aren’t they? 

‘And they’re probably looking for lower price points and relying on the assumptions of others.

‘It’s a very tough climate. I personally don’t agree with it. I think we should be promoting British produce. That’s what should be available.

‘But also, I’m not running that butchers shop, wherever he or she is, and probably trying to find a way to make ends meet. It’s a real problem.’

It comes as a mother took to Mumsnet to express her frustration at being sold foreign meat without knowing. 

She said: ‘I spent a small fortune at a local butchers on Saturday and as I went to open one of the items today (chicken), I noticed it said on the pack, ‘Origin of meat – China’.

‘That then prompted me to check all the packaging and none of the meat is sourced locally. They were all labelled as coming from either China or Poland.’

Mr Aveling, who runs his farm, shop and eco-friendly Airbnb out of the small village of Litchborough, said it is often not butchers doing the initial importing.

He explained: ‘Most times, the butcher has got nothing to do with it.

‘He or she probably has a list of produce in the week that they get from their suppliers, who have an importer, who have an importer…

‘It has probably touched ten different businesses on the way to that butcher.’ 

But butchers always go into it with their eyes open, Mr Aveling said: ‘Butchers will know exactly where things come from because it’s always labelled, it’s always in a box.

‘Unless, very occasionally, maybe if something was packaged in the UK or something, it might be hard to spot.’

Choosing to buy imported meat might be attractive to a butcher looking to balance the books, the Radmore Farm owner said – it is often much cheaper than homegrown produce.

He explained: ‘With British produce, one of the main issues is that imports know exactly how much ours cost and they just undercut it.’

If 10kg of imported meat cost £10 to buy from a supplier, Mr Aveling said the butcher might then think: ‘I can shift that for 50 quid’.

‘It’s seen as a margins game, not a provenance game.’

Able to avoid the red tape and high costs of stringently regulated slaughtering in the UK, and suffering financially already from high inflation and rising wages – that might seal the deal for a butcher, in choosing to buy imported meat.

Mr Aveling said: ‘If no one asks, I guarantee you, some [butchers] will be going, ‘I can’t pay my rent this week. I can’t do this this week, I’ve got a staff bill this week’. 

‘Butchers are struggling because footfall is down because since post-Covid, we all live in an online world.’

Mr Aveling’s own shop, in Cambridge, closed down in 2023 for this very reason.

He added: ‘It’s one of those things where you sort of understand why they’re doing it. It’s a shame but you get it.’

In his current business, Mr Aveling has to actively sacrifice getting more custom and money, for quality: ‘We’ve took the gamble on being more niche, more high quality, slightly more money, as opposed to stack it high, sell it cheap meat retailer.

‘And unfortunately, us being what we are, we’re probably not as busy.’

He added: ‘I’d rather make less money but be the right business.’

Buying imported meat works for some butchers, the Radmore Farm owner said: ‘Some butchers – that’s their clientele. And some of their clientele might fully know it’s all foreign and don’t care.

‘But this woman [from Mumsnet] obviously didn’t know and it really, really annoyed her… 

‘The fact of the matter is, this problem shouldn’t exist.’

The farmer explained: ‘There shouldn’t be chicken from China or bacon from Poland or whatever they were buying.

‘It should all be from here and we should all be getting paid a fairer price as farmers. The butchers should be earning a fairer price for the food they’re producing because they’re earning a wage.

‘And actually, if that happened nationwide, ironically, the food prices would come down to match.’

Would butchers ever try to deceive customers about the origin of their meat with rustic packaging, wrapping it up in brown paper and hessian? Mr Aveling said: ‘I don’t think they would knowingly pull the wool over people’s eyes.

‘But what I would say is they would definitely make an effort to try their best to make something look good because that’s in the nature of the business.

He explained: ‘People go to farm shops and they go to butchers and they expect it to be a step up, with the brown paper, the greaseproof.

‘I think it’s actually part of the marketing and the strategy… It’s for the look, it’s smart.’ 

He added: ‘The packaging will be to make you feel special. You don’t need that. All you need is vacuum packing to keep them fresh or overwrapped with clingfilm on a tray but that looks boring.

‘If you go to a farm shop and you buy a nice Scotch egg or something, you want it in a little box. It’s become something that’s expected of them.’

The outraged Mumsnet user also wondered about another aspect of her experience: in rural areas, is it not easier – and surely cheaper – for butchers to buy locally? 

She said: ‘I live in a very rural area with a huge network of farmers. Why on earth would a local butcher import chicken and red meat from other countries? I think it’s a disgrace.’

Mr Aveling explained why – everywhere, even in the country, it is not straightforward for butchers to get hold of local or British produce: ‘A lot of farmers are strapped at the moment.

‘They’re tied to what they do and the produce that they’re actually pushing for, they’re getting so little for, they’re having to go through supermarkets and contracts and things.

‘So, a lot of farmers might not be supplying the people that this butcher is buying from. It’s more often going to be a big central processing plant.’ 

Mr Aveling said butchers keeping their meat local also relies on them having the other businesses needed to prepare it nearby: ‘To be able to buy from local farms, you need a local abattoir, usually.

‘They’re dying out everywhere because no one uses small abattoirs anymore.’ 

So with farmers going for bigger, non-local contracts without the infrastructure nearby to sell locally, Mr Aveling concluded: ‘It’s not actually as straightforward to go to a farm and say, ‘Can I buy your beef?’ It doesn’t really work that way.

‘And it should! I’ve got a local farm down the road – there should also be a local abattoir down the road, and a local butcher down the road, and it can all be within 20-30 miles and that should exist everywhere.’

Mr Aveling thinks supermarkets have a lot to answer for in all this: ‘The supermarket is the absolute bane of my existence. Supermarkets have really killed the job.’

The farmer thinks supermarkets have stopped people caring about the provenance of their food: ‘There’s a huge story to every piece of food we eat.

‘We’re used to seeing it in a box or a pack or on a shelf. We’ve lost contact with everything [to do] with the food and this all has a domino effect on the attitudes of the nation towards imports.’ 

He gave the example of a busy, working city dweller, who grabs a chicken sandwich and a coffee on the go: ‘You’ve got no idea where the milk comes from, where the chicken comes from, or any of those things. And you don’t even realise that.

‘And it’s not anyone’s fault. It’s that we’re so used to having food on tap because we’re all so busy.

‘And we’re all churned into this terrible system that we all live in now of just grind and work. We don’t ever have time to appreciate and enjoy food and that’s what it all stems from.’

Supermarkets also undercut the prices butchers offer, Mr Aveling added, leaving shoppers potentially unwilling to pay the cost of local produce: ‘[Supermarkets have] got people used to having food at a price that’s unsustainable.’

The proportion of households’ total spending on food halved between 1957 and 2017 – from 33% to 16%, according to family spending figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

Mr Aveling pointed to these figures, saying: ‘We all pay a pittance for our food, even though it feels a lot for us now, it does feel a lot for a lot of people.

‘But the difference is, people worked to eat [in the fifties], whereas now our lifestyles are so different.

‘Everyone sort of just whittles down their food bill, saying, ‘Well, I can live without, I’d rather buy this cheaper version, I’ll buy a Chinese chicken instead or whatever because I don’t care’, kind of attitude.

‘I’d rather save my money for holidays and things’ – when a lot of the time, that’s what the trade-off is.’

Mr Aveling recognised not everyone has time and money to think a lot about where their food comes from.

He said: ‘My customers are food lovers and they have more time, more disposable income, and that’s fair to say, and they spend time looking for the right meat.’

He added: ‘There are people out there who can’t afford their food and they’re really struggling and there’s people on food banks.’

But there are others of us who could make different choices, he said: ‘I think there’s a massive lump of us in the middle who are just choosing to have what we’d rather buy than spend a bit more on our food.

‘Usually, the latest iPhone, television, subscriptions, five quid coffees. Without sounding like some sort of old, tired out guy, that’s not what I’m trying to say.

‘But people don’t see food as a priority. That’s what the supermarkets have turned society into. A whole society doesn’t actually have any connection with food.’

Mr Aveling’s recommendation to shoppers? ‘The answer is: go to supermarkets for what you have to. Everything else, get from independent suppliers.

‘Because the supermarkets genuinely don’t care, they’re too big to care. You can’t be that big and care, that’s nonsense.’

And there are things shoppers can do or look out for at the butchers or farm shop to make sure they get the produce they want: ‘Absolutely ask questions because the butchers will tell you.

‘They know exactly what’s going on, they know where things are from…

‘It is your right as a consumer to know exactly where your things are coming from.’

There are also some specific red flags to look for, he said: ‘If something’s too cheap, it’s usually not British because the cost of production is higher.’

Watch out for products like bacon, gammon and cured meats too, the farmer warned – they often come from the Netherlands and Denmark.

But also, shoppers have the power to change things, Mr Aveling said: ‘Vote with your feet and vote with your wallet.

‘If [the butcher is] importing Chinese chicken and you say, ‘I don’t want Chinese chicken’, that will filter through to the boss and he goes, ‘I better buy British chicken then’.

‘That’s all you’ve got to do!’ 

He essentially recommended customers just ask for what they want: ‘If someone wants British chicken and the butcher doesn’t have British chicken, it’s very likely the butcher will be able to order it in.

‘So, my advice would be: the butchers will be much better placed to buy your meat from, if you give them a chance.’

The award-winning shopkeeper said: ‘It’s consumer-driven a lot of the time.

‘If most people don’t really care then everyone can get away with doing it. And we should be questioning these things, we should be pushing for British produce. It should be a no-brainer.’