Wednesday 13 May 2009

Who Owns What?

This is a question which occasionally enters my mind when I buy a product; not always, but sometimes. To what extent are we buying local, British, European or Global produce?

Take the locally-produced butter, Golden Cow, which is made in County Armagh. We lunched out recently and we were given a little foil pack of Golden Cow butter. I thought it had a good flavour. I have been curious to know more about it, so I began by searching the Internet. Golden Cow Dairies have no website. I didn't give up there, though.

I trawled down the web page and spotted an Irish company called Kerry Group PLC. This company's GHQ is in a town called Tralee in County Kerry.

Golden Cow is, in fact, owned by the Kerry Group although you'd expect Kerry Group's web address to feature on the packaging in the interest of transparency.

Here's a list of Kerry Group companies:-
A cursory scan of the list will apprise the reader that Kerry Group specializes in sausages, among other household names. Kerry Group's products, particularly the butter, are not to be confused with the Kerrygold Company which also produces butter.

4 comments :

Unknown said...

thanks for the research: we have this ongoing discussion about champion vs. golden cow butter in the family. As champion is the brand of monaghan town co-op dairies and not owned by a large group I think I have good reasons to stick to my favourite butter!

Timothy Belmont said...

Hi Anja,

Glad you enjoy the taste of real butter too! I'm trying a farm-house butter made with whey presently, from Sainsbury; not too sure about its distinctive taste though.

Tim

Unknown said...

I love golden cow butter, the thing is I can't buy it in England miss the taste on my toast and cooking or baking I was brought up on it when I lived in Northern Ireland, why is it not sold in England you can buy kerrygold but not golden cow ?

Anonymous said...

You can buy golden cow butter in uk