Up your game for Great British Game Week

Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Tim Bonner writes:

We are very pleased to be co-hosting Great British Game Week from the 20th -26th November with our colleagues at the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. The week is the perfect opportunity for everyone involved in shooting to promote wild game to those that have not yet been fortunate enough to experience this beautifully versatile source of protein.

The week also allows those in the retail industry to highlight their goods to their customers, and encourage them to try wild game for the first time. For those that are more experienced cooking with wild game, it gives them the opportunity to show off their skills to friends and family.

Whilst game is both healthy and tasty the benefits of growing the game market go well beyond that. Our research has shown that the acceptance of game shooting is closely linked to the consumption of wild game. The more that people understand that game shooting creates a marketable surplus of healthy, wild food, and the more of it they eat, the more people support shooting.

That is one of the reasons that the Alliance has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in our game marketing campaign, Game-to-eat, over the last 13 years during which time the economic value of the game market in the UK passed £100 million a year and has grown around 7% annually.

The popularity and growth of game shooting, however, means that the amount of available game continues to grow so it remains important to expand the market within the UK, and look for new markets for game abroad. It is also critical that Brexit does not impact on the current successful trade in shot game from the UK into other EU countries.

These are issues the Alliance team is grappling with on a daily basis and next week we will be doing it fuelled by extra portions of game as we do our bit for Great British Game Week.

Tim Bonner
Chief Executive
Follow Tim at @CA_TimB

The Pheasant Cup