Slow Food Anglia and regional producers

In the past couple of months Slow Food Anglia members have been busy with several events in both east Anglia, London, Malta and Italy but our focus is always primarily on producers and their fantastic produce from East Anglia. East Anglia is well known for the high quality of its produce and it villages, towns and cities still hold on to the rural roots, across the counties that make up our region there is also a wide diversity of food produced by both large and also increasingly by small artisan producers.
We have been in contact with three excellent producers in our region and in this piece I will write about both the producer and their produce, and we are also pleased that one of the producers who also belongs to the Cambridge Food Collective, Camcattle and Camlamb has also become the latest member of our Slow Food Anglia Approved Business scheme.

Camcattle breed Red Poll cattle, one of the oldest breeds in East Anglia, and supply local butchers and restaurants. Camcattle boast high quality beef with a much lower carbon footprint than regular beef, making them both a sustainable choice as well as one favoured by food lovers.The cattle roam around many of the common pastures and meadows in Cambridge, which not only means that the cattle live a relatively free life, but also that consumers have the chance to see where their beef comes from.

As well as excellent beef coming from CamCattle they also have CamLamb where they produce superb lamb from animals grazed on the Wilbraham Fen near Cambridge, the sheep are from the ancient Norfolk breed the Norfolk Horn and it is hoped that Slow food Anglia can help obtain Presidia status for the breed in 2017.

Another excellent producer in our region is Fen Farm Diary which is located near the River Waveney in Bungay in the county of Suffolk. 
As well as being a dairy farm which believes and works in a green and sustainable way they also produce a creamy white cheese Baron Bigod, which is similar to a French brie, also selling raw unpasteurised milk from the UK's first milk vending machine!
They believe that the very best raw milk comes from grass, hay and forage fed cows and their aim for the very near future is to change their raw milk herd away from the industry led, high yielding, stressed out type of animal,to a more relaxed type of beast. Their herd is fast becoming a pure bred herd of Montbeliarde cows, the Montbeliarde breed are happiest when dining on grass and home grown hay and forage. 
The Montbeliarde is an ancient breed of cow, from the Alpine regions of France and their milk is naturally higher in proteins and butter fats, making it even more flavoursome, and giving even more health benefits when consumed raw.