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 | | Monday, 26 November, 2001, 13:45 GMT Butcher gives meat the chop  Fresh meat will no longer be sold at the shop A Worcestershire butcher has turned to processed foods to escape the form-filling that is required when selling fresh cuts. Colin Townend, 50, from Fladbury near Evesham has closed his shop after 20 years in business and turned it into a pie and sausage outlet. Mr Townend said his weekly accounts took three hours to complete and the daily paperwork at least 30 minutes. He said it was driving him to distraction. 'Hypocritical' exercise "There are forms that have to be filled in every day on the meat's origin, which slaughterhouse it came from, the date it arrived, which cutting plant it was from and the animal's ID number. "It wasn't that I wasn't capable of doing it. I only sold British beef, and I knew exactly where my meat came from," said Mr Townend. "There is all that labelling, yet mince is sold under a batch number, which means it comes from different animals on different farms, so it doesn't really tell you anything. It is so hypocritical.
"I won't do it on principle. The forms are not worth the paper they are written on," Mr Townend said. "The fruit seller doesn't have to say what tree his fruit comes from," he said. Mr Townend's Fladbury Butcher's Shop, the only butcher in the village, had won a county-wide clean food award 12 years in a row. Customers sometimes queued for 40 yards outside his shop at Christmas, he said, adding that several of his customers cried when they heard he was closing down. "It wasn't that we weren't busy. We were selling so much meat we just didn't have time to fill in all the paperwork." The shop is re-opening as Fladbury's Pies and Sausages, but the owner is worried new regulations on sausages may cause him more trouble next year. | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top England stories now:  Links to more England stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||
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