The watercress industry has been enjoying a renaissance as the superfood qualities of the UK’s most historic salad crop have become more widely known, especially its potential to help fight cancer, with retail sales soaring from £30 million to £60 million over the past decade. But this has led to new producers trying to exploit the boom by cutting set up costs and growing the salad leaf on land and marketing it as watercress.
The NFU Watercress Growers’ Association1 fears this will damage the industry and have applied to the EU for "Traditional Speciality Guaranteed" protected status of their growing methods2. Loosely modelled on the French AOC (Appellation d’Origine Controle), the Protected Food Name Scheme was established by the EU to help protect farming communities and to provide a guarantee of food provenance.
The "traditional speciality guaranteed" status is granted to fewer than 25 products across Europe, including Sahti beer in Finland, Pierekaczewnik bread in Poland, Jamon Serrano ham from Spain and Mozzarella cheese in Italy.
The only British product to enjoy the "traditional speciality guaranteed" status is British Farmfresh turkey, a label which ensures the turkeys are grown to at least 18 weeks old and hung for at least a week to develop a gamey flavour.
To help their case members commissioned comparative taste tests among 1003 consumers and 24 trained assessors4 which concluded that traditional watercress had a superior flavour to land grown cress. Flowing water cools the plant and gives it just the right amount of peppery bite and succulent texture, whereas land cress can become quite bitter.
But the issue is not just about ensuring the consumer gets real watercress. The association has also won the support of top conservationist David Bellamy, who says: "Well-managed watercress beds are essential to the physical protection of these sustainable biodiverse streams" for if traditional watercress farms are outcompeted by soil grown enterprises they will no longer be there to protect the precious headwaters of the UK’s most prestigious chalk streams.
The traditional method of growing watercress in water has remained unchanged since the first watercress farm opened in this country near Gravesend in Kent in 1808, though the method of growing watercress in flowing water dates back to ancient times. Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, was said to have chosen the site for the world’s first hospital, on the island of Kos, close to a stream suitable for cultivating watercress which he regarded as essential to the treatment of his patients.
In Victorian times watercress was a staple part of the diet when it could be picked for free from streams and rivers (health issues make this inadvisable today). It was used as a cure for all manner of complaints. The herbalist John Gerard thought it could help prevent scurvy while Culpepper claimed that "watercress potage is a good remedy to cleanse the blood in spring and consume the gross humours winter hath left behind."
The next stage of the association’s application for protected status is for ADAS and Defra to consult with industry bodies, allowing three months for objections. It then goes to the EU which can take another 18 months.
1 The Watercress Association has seven members who are all based in the south of England.
2 Only a genuinely traditional product can apply for TSG status. The product will have distinctive features linked to the use of traditional raw materials or stemming from traditional methods or production or processing.
3 100 consumers took part in the tests, conducted by Wirral Sensory Services in October 2008.
4 Conducted by Campden Food Research Association in June 2009.