Why buy lamb from Somerset Farm Direct?

Because the lamb tastes fantastic...
(but don't just take our word for it, click here to find out what others say)

• Our lambs are reared by experienced farmers who know and love the area, the land and their stock and consequently treat all three with care and respect
  
• The lambs are fed only natural food (a diet of grass, supplemented towards the end of the season with fresh kale and rolled barely) 
  
• Their diet is GM free
  
• They receive no antibiotic growth promoters or hormones
  
• The animals are locally slaughtered (no more than a 50 minute journey over 18 miles)
  
• The animals are then hung on the bone for a minimum of 10 days to let the flavour develop and  the texture improve
  
• When the time is ready they are expertly butchered into a variety of convenient cuts
  
• Your chosen cuts are then conveniently vacuum packed and labeled, then put in a polystyrene box with special ice packs to help maintain a constant low temperature.
  
• The lamb is then delivered direct to your door ready for you to enjoy
  
• By buying food produced in this country you are helping to keep food miles to a minimum - as yet, cheap produce imported from abroad does not include a levy to cover the environmental cost of the miles it has traveled.
  
• Perhaps the lamb will taste all the sweeter when you consider that by buying from Somerset Farm Direct you have ensured that a greater percentage of the money you have paid has gone directly to the farmers that have produced the lamb.  (Also bare in mind that our prices are very similar to those of shops selling lamb of comparable quality).

This last point is perhaps the most important. 'Why', you may ask 'is it so important that a greater percentage goes to the farmer?'  That is simple - by paying the producer a fair price for rearing a lamb in the un-intensive and old fashioned way outlined above we are encouraging them to continue farming in this way.  There has been something of a trend over the past years to reduce food prices in the shops, to do this the farmer has been required to sell his stock for less at the market, to be able to do this and to make a living at the same time he has had to rear greater numbers of stock on the same acreage.  This has required increased stocking densities and at these higher densities animals have been prone to disease hence the use of routine antibiotics (the antibiotics were found to have a beneficial side effect - they increased the growth rate in the animals).  At these higher densities that land was no longer able to provide enough food to support the stock prompting the heavy use of artificial fertilisers, and more recently the prospect of cheaply produced genetically modified feed.  The large scale retail outlets then became keen to have all of the stock that they bought slaughtered in the same place (so that they could standardize what they were selling and make sure that every lamb chop on their shelf looked identical?), the rapid, nation wide spread of Foot and Mouth disease in 2000 was one catastrophic effect of long distance travel.  The other effect has been the closure of the small abattoirs dotted around the country.