Thursday, November 1, 2012

Jimmy and the Giant Supermarket

Just had a look at the first ep of Jimmy and the Giant Supermarket – Jimmy Doherty, a free range pig farmer in UK trying to develop ‘high welfare’ alternatives for three of the biggest selling meat products of Tesco’s.


Terrific for exploring the decision making process of Tesco’s about getting a product onto the market and how hard it is to bring a high welfare product within the affordability Tesco’s wants to meet (oops!) for its market.

But for me its even more interesting for where the program goes in identifying a practice that wastes meat and how Doherty then passionately works to address the waste and create a 'high welfare' alternative practice. It's not giving too much away to say it's about the Tesco shoppers' aversion to eating veal because of concerns for what they understand as the way calves are raised for veal  and what happens to male jersey calves that are surplus to dairy farmers' needs. 

I almost want to go on line and see whether what he comes up with worked or not, but I will buy into the suspense narrative and hope for a big pay-off.

Warning - not for the faint hearted; there is a scene around 20 minutes into the ep that is confronting.

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