Anyone called upon to describe change has to decide how far to go back in history, because recent developments are usually part of a much longer-term trend. For this audience, I am sure I do not need to go back as far as the drove roads or to the Shambles around the big livestock market called Smithfield. But many of us can remember the structure of our meat industry when it was built around a distribution system for imported meat, particularly to the consumers in the major conurbations, with home-produced meat being concentrated into rural areas and some of the higherclass shops in the towns.