Bernard Matthews
Bernard Matthews is a food processing company headquartered in
Norwich,
Norfolk, with 57 farms throughout
Norfolk,
Suffolk and
Lincolnshire [
1]. They produce and market turkey and other meat products, oven-ready turkeys, day-old turkeys, fish products and other poultry products. As well as the United Kingdom, activities are carried out in
New Zealand,
Germany,
France,
Guernsey,
Hungary (under the SaGa Foods label) and
Poland.
Bernard Matthews today farms 8 million turkeys every year in the UK, feeding them a vegetarian diet of non-GM crops from the company's own feed mills. After pressure from consumer groups and Greenpeace [
2], all fresh turkeys and turkey products have been non-GM fed since March 2001 [
3].
The company was founded in 1950, soon after finishing his education at
Chigwell School, by Bernard Matthews. Its headquarters moved to its present location, Great Witchingham Hall near Norwich, in 1955. After being floated on the stock exchange in 1971, the company has recently reverted to being a limited company with ownership returning to the Matthews family.
In 1960, Bernard Matthews entered the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest turkey farmer in Europe [
4]. In 1980 the company launched its first TV commercial featuring Turkey Breast Roast, with Matthews himself introducing the famous 'Bootiful' catchphrase in his thick Norfolk accent [
5].
In 2000, Bernard Matthews successfully fought off a take-over bid from US food giant
Sara Lee [
6]. As of 2005 annual turnover is over £400 million, according to the company's website.
One of Bernard Matthews' products, "Turkey Twizzlers", became a subject of
controversy in January 2005, when they were singled out for particular criticism by the chef
Jamie Oliver in his television series
Jamie's School Dinners. The product became an emblem of the mass-produced processed food that Oliver wanted to remove from schools. In the wake of the programme, several major catering organisations announced that they would no longer serve Turkey Twizzlers in schools.
For four years the company was embroiled in a dispute over the use of the Internet domain name bernardmatthews.co.uk, which ended in a successful action through the Nominet UK Dispute Resolution Service [
7].
*
Bernard Matthews company web site
