Where did my steak come from.

[caveman]

RT is a device for big operators to take over.
They can't get their way by legislation alone.
They are adding conditions that become financially impossible for the smaller operator to implement or over come.
Thank God for the local small abattoir.
But once RT get their claws into forcing their conditions onto them and their supplies to local pubs, restraints, hotels, etc. The game will be up for a lot of us small guys.
Hook line and sinker comes to mind.

 

[kiwi pom]

I would expect that RT paper trail ends when the head is removed, passport dated with slaughter details and returned to CTS. After that any tracebility is by batch number.
A needle in haystack of 25 tonnes of meat, split into different cuts and cut in different plants too.
RT is a cosy illusion to sell a concept.

I was wondering if it may be something like that. So really the supermarket probably can't trace it back.
Perhaps the other way to go is contact Red tractor (if you can do such a thing) a few weeks after sending a beast to the works and get them to tell you which supermarket it ended up in. Make them prove their system works.

 

[Skimmer]

Like many on here I have just being on a foreign holiday, I did not know or was bothered where the food came from, whether it was well treated, in date, who cooked it what the kitchen was like ect but I enjoyed the meals I had and am still here so what is the problem with this country. Crop assurance schemes appeared after BSE to try and convince the public British food was safe but in fact would not have stopped it happening.

 

[llamedos]

Like many on here I have just being on a foreign holiday, I did not know or was bothered where the food came from, whether it was well treated, in date, who cooked it what the kitchen was like ect but I enjoyed the meals I had and am still here so what is the problem with this country. Crop assurance schemes appeared after BSE to try and convince the public British food was safe but in fact would not have stopped it happening.

I suspect you are not alone, most definitely double standards at work.

Why should any consumer care less.
Doubt even the Monbiots of this world give 2 figs about the standards of the veg pickers in the countries they visit let alone the farmers producing it or the assurance schemes.

So why do the majority here pay into these schemes.

 

[Skimmer]

Schemes are now just run as money making ventures, jobs for the boys and need stopping, supermarkets should be responsible of checking their own produce they purchase everyone else has to.

 

[Strawgalore]

I am told the butty wagon on the A683 just off Junc 34 M6 on the Quernmoor side is excellent

It's one of the best in the country imo

 

[DrWazzock]

I suspect you are not alone, most definitely double standards at work.

Why should any consumer care less.
Doubt even the Monbiots of this world give 2 figs about the standards of the veg pickers in the countries they visit let alone the farmers producing it or the assurance schemes.

So why do the majority here pay into these schemes.

Because once these schemes gained momentum, pushed by the NFU amongst others, then anybody who wasn't in the scheme couldn't sell their produce other than to a very limited market at a discount.

It's a cartel/closed shop/monopoly. Maybe that wasn't intended, but that's how it's ended up.

If you don't cough up and join the scheme you can't sell your produce, regardless of quality.

Even the Mafia weren't this successful.

I know these schemes were started possibly with the best interests of farmers at heart but it's got silly and out of control now that the people employed by these schemes depend on perpetuating and growing them to keep themselves in a job.

I do agree with the principle of these schemes as it does keep us on our toes and promote better practice, AS LONG AS IT DOESNT GO TOO FAR AND THE COST REMAINS REASONABLE. (If anybody is listening).

 

[Henarar]

the worst thing is it could have been used for much more benefit for those that pay for it, you wouldn't mind all the crap if there was a clear premium for it because the end customers were actively seeking it whereas there is just a discount sometimes now for non rt, and there is a difference

 

[Filthyfarmer]

ALL the various schemes , RT included, are the product of the litigious society we now live in. A layer of protection against bloodsucking lawyers passing the buck down the chain.
That doesn't stop common sense being applied though.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

You guys go around in circles . Problem is there is very little freedom of choice
Unless you sell direct very few will now buy your produce unless it is FA

 

[DrWazzock]

The mistake we made was that we didn't demand a premium for the RT mark. A tonne of assured wheat should have been valued at world market price plus £1 per tonne to pay for the scheme.But it wasn't. We bent over and said we will absorb the cost of the scheme in full and so now we effectively get £1 per tonne less than world market price once you take the cost of the scheme off. If this is how it had worked, we would have seen whether merchants were really that bothered about paying for the Red Tractor sticker especially on every load of exported wheat that goes on a boat.

I can't think of any other industry that sells a premium grade product for a non premium price.

This comes back to the traceability issue. If you want traceability of the beast right though to the supermarket shelf then please be willing to pay for it, a bit like you pay extra for registered post or signed for post etc. Nobody expects the post office to provide these traceability extras for free, yet somehow everybody expects farmers to do more and more for free so we are forced below min wage levels for the time we spend. In any other industry there would be an outcry.

 

[Steevo]

I can't think of any other industry that sells a premium grade product for a non premium price.

The trouble is there are numerous other premiums that are a premium to the RT premium.

American beef
British beef
RT beef
RSPCA Freedom Food Beef
Organic beef
Outdoor bred beef (ahem, pork!)
Tesco Finest beef
South American beef

The truth is the customer doesn't know one from another....and doesn't really care.

They often don't know one joint from another.

Or how to cook anything!

Or if what they are eating is healthy.

All they want in 99% of cases is tasty food now, as cheap as they can have it with as little effort as possible.....and possibly something fuzzy if trying to impress.

And when they go out for a meal/curry etc it's often the food is only 5% of what they are concerned about.

RT is not valued by anyone other than people trying to cover their arse from being sued.

It's like insurance.....only useful when you need to make a claim, at which point it's invaluable......until things have died down and returned to normal again.

 

[Old Boar]

Update - Tesco had no record of my request.
So after giving my name/address/inside leg measurement, the bar code of the beef, the weight, the price I paid (checking my card?), and the time and date I bought it, he "could not find it on the system". I told him to make further enquiries as I was not going away. He said he would phone with the answer tomorrow.

Aldi have raised my question to "getting quite urgent", but QA have not got back to them.

Anyone seen the Holy Grail?

 

[Henarar]

Anyone seen the Holy Grail?

Make sure you choose the right one

 

[Old Boar]

Tesco phoned today - they said they can only trace the animal back to the COUNTRY of origin. My bit of beef was from Scotland, slaughtered in Cornwall and cut in Huntingdon. I told them it had a RT stamp and therefore I should really be able to be told where it was born and raised. He said they only know the country. This is not acceptable. Ideas of where to go from here?

Nothing from Aldi....

 

[topground]

Tesco phoned today - they said they can only trace the animal back to the COUNTRY of origin. My bit of beef was from Scotland, slaughtered in Cornwall and cut in Huntingdon. I told them it had a RT stamp and therefore I should really be able to be told where it was born and raised. He said they only know the country. This is not acceptable. Ideas of where to go from here?

Nothing from Aldi....

Complain to your local Trading Standards about Red Tractor misrepresentation. Of particular relevance given the recent convictions featured in another thread regardng horsemeat.

 

[llamedos]

Tesco phoned today - they said they can only trace the animal back to the COUNTRY of origin. My bit of beef was from Scotland, slaughtered in Cornwall and cut in Huntingdon. I told them it had a RT stamp and therefore I should really be able to be told where it was born and raised. He said they only know the country. This is not acceptable. Ideas of where to go from here?

Nothing from Aldi....

Was that the WN plant?

 

[matthew]

So born in Scotland, wearing a Scottish eartag, slaughtered at St.Merryn, Bodmin (MH UK 3073?) then shifted to a cutting plant in Huntingdon and finally a few bits got back to Wales?
Quite a trip.

 

[Wooly]

Tesco phoned today - they said they can only trace the animal back to the COUNTRY of origin. My bit of beef was from Scotland, slaughtered in Cornwall and cut in Huntingdon. I told them it had a RT stamp and therefore I should really be able to be told where it was born and raised. He said they only know the country. This is not acceptable. Ideas of where to go from here?

Nothing from Aldi....

Absolutely shocking .....and just what is the point of us wasting money on RT !!

Your cow was transported alive from Scotland to Cornwall....around 600 miles......and that is acceptable ! Not acceptable to me. I'm not RT assured but my cattle only go 35 miles to the slaughterhouse, which is hopefully the only time they leave the area.


This area wants to transport sheep from Romney Marsh to a slaughter house in France.......around 100 miles.......and that is totally unacceptable ! WTF.


Keep digging @Old Boar .

 

[gone up the hill]

Complain to your local Trading Standards about Red Tractor misrepresentation. Of particular relevance given the recent convictions featured in another thread regardng horsemeat.

What is needed is for her/ him to go to the RT quango and ask them why they cant trace this meat back to farm ( and I mean go to the very top of the quango )