The Kennet Crayfish Company was a top three finalist in the “Food Producer of the Year” category at the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2024. The finalists and winner were recognised at a ceremony in Glasgow by an expert panel of judges led by chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. According to BBC Food & Farming Awards 2024, judges were looking for those individuals and businesses who make life better through food, at the cutting edge of innovation, leading on the best environmental practices or bringing communities together.
Andrew Leech, managing director of The Kennet Crayfish Company said at the award ceremony: “We are proud to be part of these awards and would like to thank the judges for including us as finalists and the BBC for organising the awards. We have worked very hard to create a high welfare, eco-friendly process for bringing wild crayfish, as a delicacy, back to the UK market. Signal crayfish were declared an invasive species and their capture and processing governed by new laws introduced five years ago. These crayfish are delicious to eat and, prior to the law change we sold vast quantities of live crayfish to Scandinavia and Eastern European markets.
We hope this nomination will help the hospitality and catering sectors, as well as consumers in the UK to appreciate the wonderful taste of quality, wild crayfish from the River Kennet, one of only 200 chalk streams in the world, whose nutrient rich waters contribute to the outstanding sweet, delicate flavour. Crayfish need to be culled because they carry a virus harmful to our native crayfish, predate the eggs and young of fish, water mammals and birds. We believe our crayfish, caught wild and sold chilled, are genuinely a better tasting, more eco-friendly and sustainable product. Our inclusion in this BBC award recognises this and will hopefully tempt more people to try crayfish as a real treat. Our congratulations to the winners, North By Sud-Ouest, and our fellow finalists in all the categories.”
The Kennet Crayfish Company is based at Thatcham, Berkshire on the banks of the River Kennet. They sell chilled par-cooked and cooked crayfish for the catering and hospitality trade and direct to consumers from their website www.kennetcrayfish.com, Crayfish are a smaller, freshwater cousin of the lobster, that they strongly resemble, and offer a sweet, delicate flavour somewhere between a lobster and a prawn.
The BBC Food & Farming Awards were launched in 2000, to mark the 20th anniversary of Radio 4’s The Food Programme. The mission statement then (which remains true to this day) was “to honour those who have done most to promote the cause of good food”.
