The farmer of an award-winning Welsh cheddar has called the theft of 22.5 tons of cheese a “wake-up call” for customers.
Fraudsters posing as French wholesalers stole over £300,000 worth of cheddar cheese from London distributor Neal’s Yard Dairy.
The theft included 2.5 tons of cloth-wrapped Hafod cheddar from Lampeter’s Holden Farm Dairy.
Patrick Holden, owner of Holden Farm - Wales’ longest certified organic dairy farm, said he found out 10 days ago: “Good God, we never thought our cheese would be the subject of such a heist.
“It’s a tremendous shock but also a wake-up call - how many of us think deeply about where our food comes from and how it’s produced?
“We should be more loyal in supporting sustainable farmers, who are less likely to make money than those farming produce in an environmentally damaging way.
“The thieves thought Welsh organic cheddar was a high-value cheese, but we’re not making money when we produce it the way we do, it simply carries its true cost.
“I think more of us need to know the story behind our food.
“There’s a hidden cost of cheap food which we’ve forgotten, such as costs to our health, to our water, to the environment.
“What we do to nature, we do to ourselves.”
The Metropolitan police are currently investigating the scam, however no arrests have yet been made.
Patrick described first receiving contact from what he thought was an agent from a French supermarket several months ago, asking for 22.5 tons of Hafod cheddar.
He said: “We couldn’t possibly supply that much, we produce less than 30 tons a year but could supply 2.5 tons, to which they said they’d make the difference up from other cheddar makers.
“We sent our cheese to Neal’s Yard who paid us and dispatched the cheese to a warehouse on the outskirts of London where it would then be picked up.
“This was a break in the distribution chain which stopped them from being followed up.
“I then got an anxious call from David Lockwood, co-owner of Neal’s Yard Dairy, stating there’d been a terrible heist and your cheese had been stolen!
“It shows how clever the thieves were.
“They couldn’t just steal it and sell it in the UK, people would find it.
“If it’s right that it may have gone to the Middle East or Russia people wouldn’t be so familiar with our produce.
“We’ll be ok, our supplies are tight and there may be bigger demand after the publicity.”
He is using this as an opportunity to encourage pride in the Welsh food industry: “The people who buy our cheese know the story behind it, of our small family farm with 100 cows, which we feed almost exclusively from what we grow - we haven’t used fertilisers or chemicals for 50 years.
“We have reason to be proud of the unique farming environment and food culture we have in Wales.
“We need to value it more than we have.”