I am so glad 500 jobs have been saved at Ferrari’s (pg 4). The company, with a string of 60 craft bakery outlets in Wales, has a troubled history but the new owners also believe it has great potential.
I don’t know if Business Link, which provides grants and advice, may be able to provide any assistance to the new owners but it was certainly good for Crantock Bakery in Cornwall to welcome HRH the Duke of York to celebrate its new £1.1 million investment programme of which £247,000 came from a European grant with a similar grant from Defra (pg 20).
Crantock sounds as though it is onto a winning streak investing in new machinery and innovative products such as a Full English Breakfast Pasty and even an Apple and Blackcurrant Pasty!
Traditional pasties are extremely tasty, but I am not sure you could ever label them, or even their wholesome ingredients, as healthy. Mind you, you won’t be able to label anything else as healthy soon unless it passses the most stringent of EU labelling tests (pg 4).
I have always argued against too much red tape, particularly the bucketloads that seem to emanate from Brussels, but I can see the common sense in regulating health claims on labels, particularly if they concern insufficient levels of ingredients to have any effect.
And just as we were going to press the Food Standards Agency (FSA) revealed the results of a survey of 17,000 mums who were asked to state whether they preferred the Traffic Light Labels scheme, which uses red, amber and green to denote nutritional content, or the Guideline Daily Amounts. The survey revealed that 79% preferred the Traffic Light scheme, which is very straightforward and has been adopted by Sainsbury’s. The result comes as no surprise to me because everyone is so time pressured these days most shoppers are not going to stop and work out anything.
Salt is one ingredient that is much debated in this industry and news has just reached my ears of an FSA initiative to run a workshop on yeast strains and functionality in the light of reduced salt levels in bread. It’s something we shall watch and report on with interest.
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