There are 15 chapters and 1000 members in Britain many of them producers cheese-makers and farmers of rare breeds already

There are 15 chapters and 1,000 members in Britain, many of them producers, cheese-makers and farmers of rare breeds already working towards its aims.Last month’s well-received report by the Policy Commission on the Future of Food and Farming – set up by the Government in response to the devastation wrought by foot-and-mouth disease – has also highlighted regional food. The report concluded that emphasis should shift from subsidised mass production of cheap food to environmentally sensitive management of land, while farmers should become more in touch with the food chain and consumers, and customers should be made more aware of what they’re eating. It called for a body to champion local food and for retailers to do more to promote it at home as well as abroad.Some of our regional and traditional foods have already been protected under EU legislation. This is what forbids an alcoholic elderflower fizzy drink made in Somerset to be called Champagne, and a hard cheese from Sussex saying it’s Parmesan. But it also means a factory in Marseilles couldn’t describe its cheese as Stilton.

To increase awareness of regional delicacies like Stilton, the recent report wants more British producers to apply for this protection. Defra, the ministry formerly known as Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, which administers the scheme, invites applications.It could mean that, one day, when you buy a Cornish pasty, it will have been made in Cornwall. A Cumberland sausage will come from Cumbria, and, perhaps more imminently, Melton Mowbray pork pies will have been made the way they always were in the Leicestershire market town.To get this recognition, producers must pool their knowledge. If they can’t agree with each other they won’t be able to stop outsiders from taking their name in vain. That’s where Bakewell tart-makers came unstuck when they considered applying for protected status. But there are high hopes for the Melton Mowbray pork pie.”Pies were one of the first fast foods.

Huntsmen put them in their pockets,” says Matthew O’Callaghan, a Labour councillor (and vegetarian) who has taken up the cause of this pork pie. His mission is to save a cultural food heritage and a rural industry (and jobs) that could fall into decline. The pies were first made on farms in the late 18th century as a by-product of the dairy farming that produced Stilton cheese Pigs are fed whey that is left over from cheesemaking. Unlike other pork pies, these are made with fresh – rather than cured – pork, giving them their distinctive taste of roast meat. “Everybody who knows anything about a Melton Mowbray pork pie knows you cannot use cured pork,” says O’Callaghan.The five registered manufacturers have got together, agreed on the definition of a Melton Mowbray pork pie and begun the protracted process of getting EU recognition “It has to be done in Euro-speak,” says O’Callaghan This includes facing objections from other producers. “I’m fed up with seeing imitations that are not made using the traditional recipe and have no connection with the area,” says the pie spokesman. Large-scale producers outside an area might claim they’ve kept a name going, but what’s a name worth if the product tastes nothing like the original? If the Melton Mowbray five succeed in protecting their product, this other pie-makers will have to use a different name.Such protection may be a pie-in-the-sky ambition for Cornish producers – there are factories making Cornish pasties miles from Cornwall to contend with first – but their pasty could become another traditional food that benefits from the EU scheme.