UK NEWS

JAMIE'S FREE-RANGE FOWL-UP

NEW PESTO: Jamie Oliver

Saturday October 18,2008

By Sarah Westcott

JAMIE Oliver has been left with egg on his face after it emerged that his latest pesto sauce contains eggs from battery hens.

Jamie is a patron of charity the Battery Hen Welfare Trust and his campaigning TV show Jamie’s Fowl Dinners revealed the grim reality of battery hen egg production.

But the celebrity chef faces embarrassment after the contents of his green pesto were exposed when customers raised concerns.

The pesto contains cheese made from an egg product called lyzosyme which suppliers failed to ensure was sourced only from free-range hens.

Jamie, 33, has now changed the recipe but customers have complained that the replacement sauces will not hit the shelves until 2009.

A spokeswoman for Fresh Retail Ventures, which sources and markets Oliver’s product range, admitted the gaffe on his web forum.

She said that an “urgent investigation” was launched to determine the nature of the egg listed on product labels after customer enquiries”.

She added: “Our Italian colleagues have confirmed that some of the egg products came from eggs which were not free-range and we made it clear that this is not acceptable.

“As a result, we are improving the pesto recipe using a different cheese without egg products. We anticipate this will be on sale early in 2009.”

But the response has left some customers unimpressed. One wrote on the forum: “There are still millions of jars on supermarket shelves and I feel the general public are being misled. Labels should be reprinted with immediate effect stating that egg products used are from caged birds.”

Jamie’s spokesman said: “The egg product in the pesto is lyzosyme, which is used as a preservative in Italy when making Grana Padano cheese. It exists in a tiny quantity.

“This pesto is no longer in production and the recipe is being changed.”

In January, Jamie vowed that “heads would roll” after finding out one of his restaurants, Fifteen Cornwall, had been serving eggs from battery hens.