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Hebridean Ram

The History of the Traditional Breeds
Meat Marketing Company
© Traditional Breeds Meat Marketing Company Ltd

The company’s Managing Director, Richard Lutwyche (right), identified the theory of Conservation through Consumption in the late 1980s and set about exploring the possibility of establishing a farmer co-operative to open its own retail outlet, a totally novel concept at that time. He quickly discovered the difficulties of such a scheme and took the concept of marketing rare breeds meat to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST), a charity established in 1973 to conserve rare breeds of farm stock.

The problem that he had identified was that people were readily attracted to keeping rare breeds but once they had a surplus of stock, they sent their animals into market but the commercial buyers were so scornful of rare breeds at that time that they were effectively humiliated either by not selling the stock or by accepting derisory prices for it. Coloured pigs, primitive or longwool sheep, diminutive cattle or those with extended horns – all were an anathema to the buyers for the mainstream market. The net result was either that those people cross-bred their stock or got rid of them altogether and numbers never expanded as a consequence.

To begin with, the RBST executive could not see the advantage and the concept was dismissed. In 1990, Lutwyche was made redundant from his job as a Marketing Manager in industry and invested his meagre pay-off in establishing a mail order company – The Cotswold Gourmet – to market meat from locally produced rare breeds. He bought direct from local farms, collecting stock and delivering to local abattoirs. They in turn delivered to his nominated contractor who butchered and processed the meat which was then sent all over the country. At all stages, the meat was promoted and sold by breed and the special eating qualities of each was identified.

The Cotswold Gourmet sells rare-breed meat by mail order. Richard Lutwyche,
who runs the business, has always been fascinated by rare breeds and felt that selling and marketing of the end-product needed a push. However, unlike several other rare-breed producers, he does not farm himself. Instead he buys in animals on the hoof (ie live) from 20-25 (mostly) local farms, supervises the slaughtering, handling, curing, butchering (carried our locally) and despatching.

The Cotswold Gourmet was effectively the first company to market the special eating qualities of pure bred rare breeds and its success caught the attention of the then RBST Chairman, Geoffrey Cloke. He recruited a Field Officer, Brian Lloyd-James, and went back the charity’s executive to launch the Traditional Breeds Meat Marketing Scheme. (The word ‘Rare’ was omitted from the title as it was felt that the public would not eat meat labelled ‘rare’).

Gloucester Old Spots Pigs

This was in 1994 and the first butcher was recruited in a pilot project. Again, Lutwyche was instrumental in this initiative having organised a workshop in Clevedon near Bristol for breeders of Gloucestershire Old Spots, both Cloke and Lloyd-James were in attendance and the butcher, Gary Wallace, was invited by Lutwyche to address the workshop on how to market pork from their pigs. He agreed to try meat from pedigree GOS in the shop that he then managed, Chesterton Farm Shop near Cirencester, which effectively became the first Accredited Rare Breeds Butcher. He was featured with Derek Cooper on Radio 4’s Food Programme, so novel was the concept and never looked back. The Cotswold Gourmet became Accredited Butcher number two.

Lloyd-James liaised closely with Lutwyche in those early days as the concept grew slowly and the latter was recruited to join the RBST as editor of The Ark, their quarterly magazine, and publicity officer in December 1995. In due course he was promoted to Marketing Director and took over responsibility for running the scheme. This was recognition for someone who had been a member since the charity was first formed and who supported its conservation initiatives on both a local and national level for a number of years.

The way that the Trust’s accounts were structured meant that the TBMM scheme carried a high level of overheads and as such always showed a considerable loss on the RBST balance sheet. In the difficult financial times of the late 1990s, this became an issue for some of the trustees. This was coupled with the fact that as a charity, the RBST should not have been ‘trading’, a grey area that was said to have concerned the Charity Commission. The upshot was that the RBST decided that the TBMM Scheme should be transferred out of their sphere of operation and this took place at the end of 2002 on the back of the disastrous Foot & Mouth epidemic the year before.

One of the Trustees, Peter Symonds, a farmer from Herefordshire who was the largest breeder of Traditional Hereford cattle, took on the company with he and his wife as directors. Lutwyche left the Trust to run the newly formed company from his home. The RBST agreed as part of the package to pay a nominal grant for the first three years to ensure the company’s transition to private ownership.

The TBMM Company maintains exactly the same standards and criteria and has expanded by taking over one of its Accredited Butchers in Ledbury, Herefordshire, as a flagship store to ensure the financial viability of the company as a whole. Every year, more pedigree stock is processed through this initiative and all the breeds of cattle, sheep and pigs concerned benefit as a direct result. Accredited Butchers number around 50 at any given time almost exclusively in England. As more stock becomes available, so new butchers can be recruited.o

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