Traditional farming techniques practised in the Westcountry for hundreds of years are back in fashion. Martin Hesp has been hearing about a major new study that claims naturally raised meat is good both for us and for the countryside

IT'S good news all round – the kind of traditionally produced fatty red meat that has, for so long, been branded as artery-clogging has just been officially deemed healthy and delicious. And there's more: Scientists say the farming techniques which produce such meat should be encouraged to help the region's wilder landscapes to become even more scenic.

But they warn this win-win situation will only come about if the adoption of age-old farming practices is aided by Government support.

That is one of the main conclusions of a two-and-a-half-year study by a team of Westcountry-based scientists who claim that traditional farming techniques based on rich and diverse grazing, for which the Westcountry was once famous, should be encouraged.

It's all down to the kind of pasture cows and sheep eat – modern mono-crops like ryegrasses used to make silage do not produce such tasty or healthy meat as traditional lays that have a rich diversity of herbage.

Scientists based at Exeter University found that one of the healthiest farmed meats to be found anywhere was lamb that has been raised on heather moors in places like Exmoor and Dartmoor.

The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) concluded that traditional pasture-based farming is good for the environment, the consumer and the producer.

However, the report emphasises that an agricultural revolution which in some way winds the clock back 60 years would require strong support from policymakers if it was ever to realise its full potential.

The report's authors say they are not calling for an end to mainstream intensive agricultural techniques, but highlighting the benefits of farming in a way that embraces the natural environment rather than defies it.

"We are not pushing a new model for British farming," says research team leader Professor Henry Buller. "This is a particular type of system we are trying to promote – it will not be able to compete against intensive type of production that fills the supermarket shelves.

"But quality meat obviously has a price premium, which is good for the farmer – and for consumers because it is healthy and delicious and you are gaining environmental protection and conservation."

The research carried out detailed analysis of the nutritional qualities of plant species present in natural grasslands and showed that they provided grazing animals with a richer, more diverse diet than the improved pastures used for more intensive farming. And this richer diet translated into healthier and tastier meat.

Wild-grazed moorland lambs scored highest on the health charts – the meat had higher levels of the natural antioxidant vitamin E, than is found in animals grazed on "improved" grassland.

"It also had higher levels of healthy fatty acids including the long chain omega 3 fatty acid, DHA – thought to play a key role in brain development and to protect against heart disease."

Both lamb and beef reared on unimproved pastures had higher levels of the anti-carcinogenic compound, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than meat raised intensively.

The study employed the help of taste panels manned by professionals who rated biodiverse beef from traditional British cattle breeds to be more tender and more flavour-intense than meat from conventional breeds.

The bad news is that non-intensively reared meat costs more, but focus groups interviewed during the study showed that consumers were increasingly willing to pay for food with links to natural-sounding places.

Prof Buller told the WMN that both producers and policymakers should give serious attention to the way local food was labelled and promoted and added that there should be targeted support to help groups of farmers to work together to link the natural qualities of biodiverse grasslands to areas larger than individual farms.

"The British notion of local has become far too fixed on distance. Locality should be about the quality of the place and the relationship between the agricultural and ecological landscape.

"But Britain has been very slow to take advantage of place-based labelling schemes – while France has 52 protected designations for meat products, the UK has only eight.

"It's a way of putting up a territorial copyright. I've always said the Westcountry is the place to do this. It has a rich tradition and is a rich place in the iconography of food – you have cream teas, Cornish pasties, Red Devon beef. It has an extraordinarily varied terrain which lends itself to the French system of 'terroir'. There are the culm grasslands, there's Dartmoor, Exmoor, Bodmin Moor, the Exe estuary, and so on – full of little areas where special landscapes and products exist."

The professor said the report's findings should be good news for farmers in the region because it also called for a rethink in the way policymakers thought about conservation.

"Our conservation policies tend to restrain agriculture. Agriculture is seen as potentially hazardous for the environment – but where you're looking at the type of agriculture that works well in an environment, there should be designations that help and promote it.

"It's a real issue – look at the Swiss example or the French – the construction of designations, whether they be in a national park or somewhere else, have done much better in those countries because there is a sense that agriculture is an essential part of landscape."

NFU spokesman in the South West Ian Johnson welcomed the report: "The South West is the UK's leading region for traditional grazing. 80 per cent of our land is farmed and 80 per cent of that is grassland. Grass is a very sustainable crop – it makes the South West look very nice and it makes a lot of sense in the production of livestock.

"Meat South West, which is the regional trade group, is currently seeking the EU PGI status (Protected Geographical Indication) for predominantly grass-fed cattle and that would be an important milestone.

"It's very important that the South West is pre-eminent in this particular field – it is essential to the region."

Mr Johnson added: "I only hope this new report gets seen in the right places – it needs to go beyond Hilary Benn (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and it needs to do so sooner rather than later."