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Congratulations on local angle

Food and farming minister Lord Whitty has heaped praise on the Western Morning News Buy Local campaign at a conference on sourcing local food.

He congratulated the paper on its work, aimed at revitalizing local industries in the wake of the foot and mouth crisis, saying: “I think it’s a good campaign.”

He added: “For the long-running health of the food chain and the rural economy, buying more local food must be an important part of that.”

His comments came on the same day that the Council for the Protection of Rural England issued a report urging retailers to clearly label products that had come from within a 30-mile radius.

Backing the WMN initiative, CPRE Devon chairman Jim Wollcombe said: “It is campaigns like this that get people demanding local produce in supermarkets and prevents them buying goods which they think could reasonably have been produced closer to home.”

National Farmers’ Union Devon branch chairman John Daw added: “The WMN has done a good job. The countryside is having to really tighten its belt at the moment and we all need to work together on this.”

WMN editor Barrie Williams said: “Too many shoppers neither know, nor care, where the food they buy comes from. But there is evidence of a change.

“The Buy Local campaign, set up by the Western Morning News and adopted by the South West Regional Development Agency, is already having an impact on the choices people make about the food they buy.

“The only way to win the Buy Local battle is to persuade the supermarkets to stock more locally sourced items and urge customers to seek them out and buy them.”

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