My name is Emma and I started Honeybuns bakery in 1998. I'd like to highlight the challenge of safe & ethical sourcing faced by artisan gluten free food producers.

Sourcing ingredients is becoming an increasingly complex juggling act. for example, we want to buy locally but sometimes we have to concede that local offerings are not up to scratch.

At Honeybuns our incoming goods procedure is the most importnat stage in the production process. You can be highly skilled & conscientious at every other stage but if the raw matericals are not perfect then the product with inevitably be comprimised.

We therefore require full traceability from each of our suppliers. They need to be able to demonstrate their standards of hygiene & food safety are top flight. The issue of gluten contamination is critical to pin down. We can only work with suppliers who can provide a written gluten free product specification and laboratory reports for each of the ingredients they supply.

These requirements can knock out quite a few potential local suppliers who simply have not got the necessary food safetly systems in place. As red tape increases year on year I'm amazed that any of us in the food world actually have time to make anything any more!

I'm all in favour of safe production methods but as with the world of heath & safetly the pendulum has swung very much to the "paperwork overload" end of the scale!

Sustainability, low food miles (wherever possible), avoidance of air miles are other issues we consider in our search for the ideal supplier. We do not use any air freighted ingredients - all of our dried fruits and nuts are shipped. Obviously there is still a CO2 impact but I'm one of the opinion that we need to strive for a realistic balance. I'm not ready to forget the delights of chocolate, coffee, pecan nuts and cramberries just yet.

I believe that all we can do is strive for some kind of sensible, sustainable balance in these increasingly bewildering times. We endeavour to focus on quality, fabulous taste and safety. Considerations such as organic and Fairtrade would be opening up a whole new debate and I'm running out of space.......

Emma Goss-Custard

The Honeybuns range of products includes 13 cake slices and soft baked cookes plus a brand new savoury take home tray bake.

Honeybuns Tel: 01963 23597 www.honeybuns.co.uk