The Pig Idea Feast
On the 21st November The Pig Idea team served over 5,000 portions of food to the public for free.
Each of the seven participating restaurants handed out a variety of dishes using pork that had been reared by the campaign at Stepney City Farm on a diet of food that otherwise would have been wasted.
The team were joined by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Sara Cox, Giles Coren, Valentine Warner, Stevie Parle and Bruno Loubert on the day who all got on stage to wow the audience with some interesting pork-based cooking demos - from trotters to tounge!
Staying true to the campaign's ethos of nose-to-tail eating, the blood of the pigs was used by David Philpot from Paternoster Chophouse for his infamous black pudding scotch eggs, and the livers, lungs and hearts were used by culinary diploma students from Westminster Kingsway College to make an offal terrine.
All of this and we even had time for a pig & food waste themed ceilidh slap bang in the middle of Trafalgar Square...
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The aim of the feast was to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the feeding of crops to pigs in order to gather support for The Pig Idea campaign which seeks to utilise food waste as a valuable and effect alternative feed for pigs.
The Pig Idea have been rearing 8 pigs on Stepney City Farm since June this year on a diet of legally permissible food waste. The aim of this demonstration was to show that not only is this method of feeding pigs safe and environmentally friendly, but that the end product is also delicious.
A key message of the day was that whilst we all need to reduce our meat consumption drastically, the remaining meat that we do eat needs to come not only from animals that have been bred and reared under the highest welfare standards, but also from animals that have been fed in the most sustainable way, whether that's food waste fed pork or pasture-fed beef.
As a result 7,444 people have now signed The Pig Idea pledge to not only reduce their own food waste but also to show that they want food businesses to start adhering to the food waste hierarchy.
There's been some ab-swill-lutely brilliant press coverage over the past few days which can be found here. Photographs from the day can be found on the Feeding the 5000 Facebook page. We've also got a short film coming shortly so stay tuned!
The Pig Idea would like to thank the following for their tremendous support in helping organise and fund the feast:
Alex Burrows Events, The Mayor of London, London Food, Wahaca, The Zetter Group, Cabana, D&D London, Soho House, Rex Restaurant Associates, Ballymaloe Cookery School, The River Cafe, Stepney City Farm, Clean Bean, Gringa Dairy, the White Hart Brewery, Reynolds, Bio Collectors, Compassion in World Farming, Farms Not Factories, Friends of the Earth, Slow Food London, Miranda Godfrey and her students from Westminster Kingsway College, Adam Taffler, Green House PR, Story PR, and of course all of our ham-azing volunteers:
Finally, a huge thank you from The Pig Idea team to everyone who came to support the campaign - oink!
All photo credits go to Ki Price, Karolina Webb & Diana Jarvis respectively.