Fair Deal For Farmers: Zoo sourcing its animal feed from region

The attraction has more than 1,500 animals to feed, and an annual food bill topping £120,000, supports local suppliers by purchasing produce from farmers from around the region including hay from Claverley and meat from Knighton.

Curator Richard Brown today backed the Star's Fair Deal for Farmers campaign, adding: "We have more than 200 animal species on site, who all have different dietary requirements, and it's important that their food is fresh.

"We buy seasonal fruit and vegetables which we source from neighbouring counties, as we know we'll get the best food at the best price."

Raw meat is delivered once a month from M J Caine and Sons in Knighton on the Welsh border, while the hay comes from Sytch House Farm in Claverley, where it is collected and transported by Black Country-based Holland Contracting. The zoo also takes deliveries of vegetables from Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire twice a week and is encouraging visitors to learn more about its work with local farmers this weekend as part of British Food Fortnight.Mr Brown added: "We're encouraging visitors to come and learn more about British Food Fortnight this weekend by taking a look at our display in the Discovery Centre and hear about the different British foods our animals eat by following our daily talks programme, running throughout the day."

To mark the occasion, the zoo is also offering £1 entry for children – details on the dudleyzoo.org.uk website – and will be holding a raffle to win the chance to feed local produce to some of the animals.

Join our campaign – and highlight how you place the produce of Shropshire and Mid Wales in the shop window.

We have launched a directory of businesses that support our region's farmers - see it at shropshirestar.com/farmers

You might be a butcher, baker, deli or even a florist. You may run a restaurant, pub or cafe. Or you may sell your wares at fairs or farmers markets.

As long as you use produce made by farmers in our region, you can be included.

The Shropshire Star will create an online directory of businesses that support our farmers.

And we will send you a Fair Deal for Farmers window sticker that you can display to your customers.

It is easy to get involved:

Send an email to us at: newsroom@shropshirestar.co.uk

Write to: Fair Deal, Shropshire Star, Ketley, Telford TF1 5HU

We need to know your name, the name of your business and its address and how you support farmers – please also name farms you support and the produce you either sell or serve up.