'EU HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BOWYERS' JOB LOSSES' SAYS MEP

12.06.33pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 16th Jul 2007

Reacting to claims that 400 jobs will be lost at the Trowbridge Bowyers meat plant as a result of EU rules, local MEP Graham Watson said:

"The rules on protected name status came in fourteen years ago. Melton Mowbray applied for protected name status eight years ago. Bowyers could continue to call their pies Melton Mowbray pies for another five years yet. So it's not the EU which is to blame.

'What is happening here is that Vision Capital, the owners of Bowyers, is doing what equity funds do everywhere: closing a site to maximise their profit. By concentrating production on one site elsewhere they will be able to sell a valuable land asset in Trowbridge for a lot of money while land prices are high. Years of under-investment in the Bowyers site make it less profitable than others. But had they invested fourteen years ago in re-branding Bowyers meat pies there would be a healthy future for Trowbridge Pies - just as there is for West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, Single Gloucester and other products up and down the country from the Cornish Pasty to Newcastle Brown Ale.

'The Bowyers workforce should be in no doubt: it is short term profit maximization which is the cause of their job losses, not the EU!"