Welcome to It's Our Sausage! We believe that only sausages produced in Lincolnshire, by Lincolnshire butchers, should be known as Lincolnshire Sausages, and that's why we've launched It's Our Sausage! On this site, you'll find all you need to voice your support for Lincolnshire's butchers, and will be able to register your support for the great Lincolnshire sausage with Lincoln MP Gillian Merron. Also on this site, you'll find a directory of specialist local butchers determined to keep the Lincolnshire sausage within the county and will be able to obtain your own It's Our Sausage window sticker for your car too.

Lincoln MP Gillian Merron and Kenny Roberts of Elite Meats supporting the Lincolnshire Sausage.

Lincolnshire Pride has teamed up with other media institutions countywide to launch the It’s Our Sausage campaign, with posters, car stickers and website, find out why in our special feature this month as we ensure that the Lincolnshire sausage is here for years to come!

What sells in quantities of 175,000 tonnes each year and encompasses a market worth £500m annually to consumers? The answer is simple – the great British banger.

And nowhere is this behemoth of a foodstuff more loved and renowned than in Lincolnshire, home of the Lincolnshire sausage, our very special regional variation. However, the Lincolnshire sausage is under threat from pale imitations, with a number of clones produced en-masse and bearing the name of the county despite showing little similarity to Lincolnshire foodstuffs.

That’s why a number of county butchers has united to encourage both UK and European politicians to award the Lincolnshire sausage protected status – that is, to ensure that sausages bearing the name of the county can only be produced to strict specifications and within the county’s borders.

To ensure the politicians’ continued interest, we need to encourage members of the public to demonstrate their solidarity and support for their local butcher, to put their name to the campaign by signing our on-line petition and displaying ‘It’s Our Sausage!’ car window stickers as they drive around the county.

You’ll find your car sticker with this edition, so please make sure that you display it proudly and point your web browser to the website we’ve launched to support the campaign at www.itsoursausage.co.uk to sign our petition which will lobby supporter of the campaign, and MP for the Lincoln area, Gillian Merron.

Elsewhere, we’re working with Lincolnshire butchers to take the sausage onto the streets and find out how both residents of the county and those from further away feel about the product, joining forces with the rest of the county’s media to encourage the public to get behind our campaign.

Find out what happened in this month’s 12 page campaign to encourage Lincolnshire folk to acknowledge that “It’s Our Sausage!”

Try our sausages!

Armed with a tray of sausages courtesy of Kenny Roberts, president of the Lincoln Master Butchers’ Association, we tried to find visitors to the county from far and wide to encourage them to sample our sausage for the first time With Kenny Roberts, the President of the Lincoln Master Butchers’ Association providing plenty of ammunition, we took the Lincolnshire sausage onto the streets to challenge both locals and those from further afield to try Lincolnshire sausages and compare them to the mealy mass-produced sausages trying to pass themselves off as the genuine article.

Kenny himself has been a butcher in the City for over 16 years, but has worked since the age of 14, initially as a Saturday boy.

“I loved the patter right from the start!” says Kenny. “There’s always something going on and I really like the fact that I know all my customers!”

It was about a year ago that he banded together with his fellow members of the Association to discuss the problem of pretenders to the Lincolnshire sausage throne appearing on the shelves. “It occurred to us that people are just taking the name and the glory away from the county.”

Consequently, a committee was created to regionalise the sausage and as this story is being written, the largest bid ever has been made to encourage European and British MPs to acknowledge that our sausage should only be produced in the county by our butchers.

To encourage support for this aim, the public is being encouraged to support their local butcher and display our car stickers, and log onto www.itsoursausage.co.uk to join lobbyist Gillian Merron in the quest to gain the Lincolnshire sausage protected status.

Food for thought

The sausage is a real cultural construct, developing over a century and reflecting the eating habits of the ages.

Believe it or not, when you’re eating the Lincolnshire sausage you’re actually eating a recipe going back over a century, and enjoying food that’s been around for over two thousand years.

The Greek play Orya first makes reference to the sausage, with the name itself meaning sausage  - it wasn’t, however, until about 500BC that it was particularly popularised, and until modern Latin emerged that its present name of salsus, meaning salted, gradually involved into the current term for the food. The term salsus probably referred to all cured and salted meat, but with further seasoning, the name stuck and gradually came to refer to sausages specifically.

At the time, the sausage was merely a snack served by amphitheatre stallholders, and it wasn’t until at least 300AD that the food was popularised in its various forms according to each country’s access to different species and preservation methods, and each country’s climate -  which would, obviously, dictate the necessity or otherwise of refrigeration or preservation through other methods such as smoking.

The sausage was imported into the country pre-renaissance, and only from 1600s was the product divided into individual links, with regional customs of creating straight or circular formations, or creating meatball shaped sausages according to their country’s customs.

The 1700s saw the most famous highwayman of the time, Dick Turpin, leave his day job in the evening to force travellers to ‘stand and deliver’, but meanwhile, Turpin was delivering the sausage as we know it today. Poor transport links at the time meant that regional variations in most products were still very much in a state of polarisation.

During Victorian times, the Queen herself was reportedly a big fan of the food, but it wasn’t until the end of her reign that the first mention of Lincolnshire sausage is made, hence the reason we believe it originated from the 1850s-1880s. The ‘holy grail of Lincolnshire sausage culture would be the discovery of the earliest written recipe for the county’s sausage - can any of our readers help?

When the country went to war, food rationing affected the production of the sausage itself, with soya products being used as a meat substitute (perhaps the earliest example of vegetarian sausages), or the meat content of the products was lowered to just 2%. Fortunately, the end of rationing saw somewhat of a boom period for Lincolnshire agriculture and it has gone from strength to strength until the coming of supermarket culture and presence of mass production and in-store butchers in larger supermarkets.

Following an initial bid in October of 2004, for Protected Geographical Indication, presented to the EU by DEFRA in early 2005, a subsequent meeting on the 15th March 2006 of the Lincolnshire Sausage Association’s steering group saw a further bid being made following on from the efforts made by the Association and Gillian Merron to bring the issue to the attention of both Europe and the UK’s parliament.
At the time of going to press, that bid is being considered but the findings could take many months to be announced.

With a little help from its friends

The Lincolnshire Echo’s Mel West on how the county’s sausage has found friends in the city and in the media.

The unassuming, placid butchers of Lincolnshire may be a hardy bunch, but hardly the makings of modern-day rebels ready to fire the cannons over the county border. But they’ve well and truly tightened their aprons ready for battle with their neighbouring British butchers.

The somewhat patronising title ‘sausage wars’ is being waged in earnest - and there’s more than a few puns and catchy headlines at stake. Inferior imitations of the great Lincolnshire sausage are snatching millions of pounds away from the county’s industry while, it is argued, ripping-off its heritage.

Everyday unknowing sausage-lovers buy, cook and eat bangers bearing the Lincolnshire name when, in fact, the pigs they have come from have never set a trotter inside the county boundary.

Likewise, their meat is not processed in Lincolnshire. The discerning, and even, it is argued, the less-than-discerning palate can spot the difference - so why can’t the law? Only sparkling white wine made in the Champagne region of France is allowed to bear the name. Melton Mowbray pork pies must now originate from the region to trade. Stilton cheese does not hail from Grimsby and Newcastle Brown Ale isn’t brewed in Wales... so why should Lincolnshire sausages be made anywhere else?

The campaign to save the sausage - spearheaded by county butchers George Adams and Kenny Roberts’ Association of Master Butchers - would take Lincolnshire bangers to the steps of the European Parliament in Brussels and onto the plates of English MPs. The first salvo fired in the pages of the Echo asked politicians, consumers and readers alike to get behind the campaign.

A few months later sausage-loving shoppers crowded into Lincoln’s Castle Square to munch their way through a festival in honour of the mighty banger - and signed a petition to protect it. The hypnotic aroma from the frying pan and griddles used for the Lincolnshire Sausage Festival, as it was called, must have wafted down to Parliament because within weeks MPs including Environment Minister Elliot Morley were backing the bid.

Clarissa Dickson-Wright - one half of the Two Fat Ladies cooking duo, made famous on BBCTV in the 990s - lent her support and provided a crucial slice of evidence - an authentic recipe for Lincolnshire sausage. It was an important moment in the campaign, whose success depends entirely on the ability to demonstrates the sausage’s origins really do lie in the county.

The butchers must not only gain the official backing of the British Government but must be able to produce a dossier of evidence proving that the sausage hails from Lincolnshire - and still has historical links with the county. The petition to the European Commission - which will have the task of evaluating the bid - must also convince its members that the blend of Lincolnshire-bred meat and herbs is the real McCoy.

With that in mind the Lincoln Master Butchers’ Association, together with a  team of journalists from Lincoln, stocked up on Lincolnshire sausages and headed for Brussels. Aided and abetted by East Midlands MEP Chris Heaton-Harris Mr Roberts began his food assault on the thousands of politicians and administrators based at the European Parliament last October. They then barbecued 10 pounds of the finest Lincolnshire sausage meat on the steps of the building before distributing them to the intrigued - and hungry - onlookers.
“We’re talking about people’s livelihoods here,” said the apron-clad Mr Heaton-Harris. “I’m sure these butchers are determined to go all the way,  But, really, why should small traders have to go through costly legal battles to stop people ripping-off something that their predecessors developed?”

Ten more MEPs signed-up to the campaign following the ‘stunt’. Back home the Association began to collect more evidence for the push. A decision to give Melton Mowbray Pork Pies Protected Status was challenged in the High Court. The challenge was thrown out. Meanwhile the European Parliament has announced it may relax the obstacles currently facing producers wanting to protect their food.
Consequently, Kenny and the Associaiton cooked up a storm of support at the House of Commons. Lincolnshire sausages were served to politicians in Parliament on Budget Day this year, with each of the Common’s restaurants and canteens serving the delicacies to promote the campaign; the day was organised by Lincoln MP Gillian Merron.

Meanwhile, the group is repeating their appeal for authentic Lincolnshire sausage recipes. “There’s still a way to go and we need evidence and lots of it,” says the Association. “Everyone loves real Lincolnshire sausages when they taste them - and we need to keep our product protected.”

Cooking up a Treat

How We Made The Lincolnshire Pride special edition sausage to celebrate the launch of our campaign

Lincolnshire Pride and Boston Sausage teamed up to create a special edition sausage celebrating the
It’s Our Sausage campaign. Join us as we find out from one of Lincolnshire’s best butchers what makes
the county’s sausage truly unique

With over four generations of experience, nobody knows Lincolnshire sausages quite like Boston Sausage, so where else could we go to find expert butchers to produce our very own exclusive Lincolnshire Pride special edition sausage? We enlisted the help of Daniel Mountain, the great grandson of Jabez Holland Mountain who began trading at the family’s shop on Boston’s Bridge Foot and Scott Palmer, current manager of the business, which was renamed Boston Sausage by Dan’s father, Robert Mountain in celebration of their flagship product.

“We’re pork butchers but we specialise in sausages – which make up about 80% of our trade. In addition to the famous Boston Sausage, we sell the Farmhouse variety which was invented by my grandfather, John Edwin Mountain and a gluten free sausage for those with a wheat intolerance.”

Also on offer from the shop is a range of monthly special edition sausages, which has previously seen pork lended with apricot or leek. This month’s special is Apple, whilst June will see a special chilli edition on sale. Also on sale this month though, will be a Lincolnshire Pride sausage, which we helped Dan and Scott to create before inviting the people of Boston to choose which of two candidates should go on to become the special edition sausage.

Whilst creating our sausage, we also took the opportunity to ask the pair what makes the Lincolnshire sausage different from lesser products. Whilst some sausages produced out of the county are produced with pure (but lesser quality cuts of) pork, Lincolnshire sausages are made with breadcrumbs and seasoning too, and it’s the basic recipe which gives it a unique flavour and texture. “The Lincolnshire sausage is distinct because it uses herbs rather than spices to create its unique flavour.” Says Scott. “Also, the ingredients are more authentic and genuine – for instance, there are no artificial casings used in our Lincolnshire sausages, and the pork used is of a consistently high quality rather than off-cuts.”

Regarding this last point, it’s important to remember that whilst mass manufacturing necessarily means using different grades of pork or pork from different parts of the animal, Boston Sausage uses exactly the same pork as those on the counter sold in cuts, and all of the shop’s sausages are made in fresh batches each morning. “It’s important that we know and trust where our pork comes from. Traceability is vital, and we do consider it important that we can always say we use locally sourced meat and can vouch for the quality of our ingredients.”

With Dan and Scott, we created two sausages and ventured onto the streets of Boston to invite the public to nominate their favourite – prototype sausage one was a slightly stronger, modified blend of the company’s Farmhouse sausage with a much richer more rounded flavour. Prototype sausage two, meanwhile, proved even more popular, using a ‘secret ingredient’ to offer an altogether different flavour.

Naturally we couldn’t possibly disclose exactly what ingredient we chose, but of the ten members of the public we asked to sample the two prototypes, it was the second which proved extremely popular, with our respondents voting that this was the sausage which should go into production. Back at the Bridge Foot shop, we minced the meat, mixing the recipe and then loaded the filling into the machine which would squeeze our new recipe into its natural casings. 50lb of sausage mix made around 400 of our sausages, and so with the first batch ready, it was back to Lincolnshire Pride HQ so we could test the new variety on a pack of hungry deadliners.

Having successfully investigated what makes the Lincolnshire sausage unique then, we had a much richer appreciation for exactly why its composition and quality should be validated and preserved. As for our special edition sausage, don’t just take our word for how delicious it is – Boston Sausage have recently launched their telephone mail order service for next-day delivery of your chosen variety to anywhere in the county & beyond, and will shortly be launching their on-line shopping website at www.bostonsausage.co.uk – try some Lincolnshire Pride special blend sausages for yourself!

What can you do?

To save the sausage, display your sticker, sign our petition, make friends with your butcher and pledge your support at www.itsoursausage.co.uk

Lincoln’s MP, Gillian Merron, set the wheels in motion on Lincolnshire’s campaign to get protected status for the Lincolnshire Sausage at UK parliament in January. In order for this to happen though, we need your help. Gillian needs to demonstrate the strength of public feeling so by logging onto our website and signing our on-line petition stating that you believe Lincolnshire sausages should only be produced in the county by county butchers, you can help enormously.

In addition, you can display your Lincolnshire Pride It’s Our Sausage car sticker to voice your support for the campaign.  Whilst it’s important to vocalise your support, it’s crucial that butchers across the county are supported in the face of competitive supermarket trading, so don’t forget to eschew mass produced sausages in lieu of a trip to your local family butcher on a Saturday morning to make sure your sausages are as fresh as possible and represent the genuine Lincolnshire article.
Voice your support; click onto www.itsoursausage.co.uk and sign our on-line petition which Gillian can use in her campaign.