TV chef in new film for campaign to end factory farming

Gill Meller, former head chef at River Cottage, stars alongside organic farmer Harry Boglione in the first of a new ‘Rooting for Real Farms’ video series.

In these videos, top chefs team up with high welfare farmers, urging people to stop factory farming by using the power of their purse to only buy from local, high welfare farms.

Gill appeared regularly in the long running Channel 4 River Cottage TV series and has published numerous cook books.

In the film he is seen cooking on an outdoor oven at his home.

He highlights the cruelty of factory farming and the case for better meat while preparing a toad-in-the-hole using pork sausages from Harry’s Haye Farm in east Devon, below.

Haye Farm has an ethos of regenerative agriculture and high animal welfare standards, allowing its animals to live how nature intended on pasture that also builds the soil and sequesters carbon to reverse climate change.

Gill and Harry join dozens of the UK’s leading foodies including chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Clodagh McKenna, Olia Hercules, and Ching He Huang, as well as actor Dominic West by taking part in the campaign video series that urges people to ‘turn their noses up’ at factory farmed pork and support local farmers.

A national alliance of farmers, foodies, animal welfare campaigns, including the Soil Association and Sustainable Food Trust, share the short videos to promote their campaigns for a local, high welfare food system.

The launch of the series comes at what is described as a pivotal moment in UK food and farming history.

The UK is in the process of signing new Trade Deals which it is claimed could lead to an influx of cheap low quality factory farmed meat produced to standards that would be illegal in the UK, putting local farmers at an unfair disadvantage for having high standards and 'incentivising a race to the bottom'.

The ‘Rooting for Real Farms’ campaign is urging legislators to unleash the full powers vested in Parliament from leaving the European Union to make sure future Trade Deals prevent the import of meat from substandard farms, to not only sustain but improve our animal welfare, food and farming standards.

Gill Meller said: “Whether it’s beef, pork, or lamb, it’s really important, those animals have led the most natural life possible. It’s up to us really as the consumer to support farmers who are producing meat in that way.

“For a lot of people having access to fantastic ingredients and sustainably produced meat is not that easy. But if you look a bit further afield, you can find producers who are doing great stuff, it might just be a case of going down to the local farmer’s market or making inquiries at your local butchers.”

He added: “There are ways to track down really, really top grade stuff that’s been produced in an ethical and sustainable way in your locality by farmers who really believe in the highest welfare standards for the animals that they’re producing.”

Farmer Harry Boglione added: “Whether or not we’re aware of it, every time we eat we are voting for the food system we want to support.

"In factory farm crates pigs don’t even have enough room to turn around, it’s desperately cruel. While the pigs are routinely injected with antibiotics so they can survive the squalor and stress of their conditions which further contributes to antibiotic resistance and antibiotics not working to treat human diseases.”