Royal Smithfield Club calls a halt to livestock contests
The Royal Smithfield Club linked for more than two hundred years with holding some of the top primestock and carcase competitions in the UK has announced that it will no longer do so.
In a letter to its members, the Club has indicated, following the expiry of a seven year partnership with the East of England show, it has no immediate plans for commercial competitions but is exploring other unspecified initiatives.
In the second half of last century, legions of top Scottish commercial breeders and trainloads of supporters made the pilgrimage south and converged on London’s Earls Court every December.
The aim of the exhibitors was to win at the Smithfield show which was then reckoned to be the premier competition in the UK for fatstock. The aim of the spectators was not only to visit the major “Country comes to town” exhibition but also to take in some of the London lights.
This successful mould was broken in 2003 when the agricultural machinery manufacturers who had combined with the Royal Smithfield Club to support this major exhibition in the centre of London
0 Competitions are a showcase for livestock decided it was no longer viable to do so.
The machinery dealers reckoned potential purchasers of tractors and combines were more likely to pull out their cheque books after seeing the machinery in working mode down on the farm rather than under the artificial spotlights on a show podium in London.
Unable to bear the cost of putting on the livestock competition on its own within London, the Smithfield club took its competition initially out to Shepton Mallet and, since 2007, to Peterborough.
That experiment in the arable east of England has failed to attract either exhibitors or visitors and, in an amicable separation, the Smithfield club has now announced it will no longer be associated with the East of England show.
Geoff Burgess, the Club’s Honorary Secretary. “It is clear that the East of England Agricultural Society now has the resources and expertise to run a successful primestock event; which frees the Club to develop other initiatives.”
Just what the club envisages is far from clear but one Smithfield Club director who wished anonymity suggested that different Smithfield awards could be devolved to local shows where they could be accompanied by some of the vast array of silverware owned by the club.