I WOULD like to take the trouble to support the work of former councillor Mike Plummer in promoting British business (Get the economy back on track by buying British, Daily Echo, August 9).

Small business, in particular, is the oil that runs the engine of our regional economy.

I have particular experience of the food and rural craft sectors and their end product in many cases is exceptional.

The figures Mr Plummer uses to back up his campaign do not surprise me. I would like to add my own observations to the 143,000 tonnes of chicken imported into this country from Brazil and Thailand.

How many of these birds would have been free-range or barn-fed chickens?

Furthermore if they were reared in battery cages – as I suspect most of them were – would they have been raised to EU standards? Readers can draw their own conclusions.

The figures involving imported fish are shocking, particularly when you appreciate the efforts Dorset celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has made to inform us of what lies in our inshore fishing areas in his series River Cottage Gone Fishing.

If you look east, west and north of Bournemouth and Poole, you have Purbeck, the New Forest and the patchwork quilt of North Dorset. The raw materials used to shape the countryside around us has been funded by small business.

While I can’t force anyone to stop using supermarkets, if people make more efforts to buy Dorset food and craft products, more money will be invested back into the communities that support it.

If the French and Irish go out of their way to support their rural economies and the culture that goes with that, why can’t we? It is not xenophobic to do so, so let’s be resource efficient.

Matthew Bell, Bettiscombe Close, Canford Heath