Sir, – Earlier this month the D&S Times reported an interesting proposal from the Conservative Agriculture spokesman to create a supermarket ombudsman.

Community-based rural businesses like The Wensleydale Creamery will find this idea really attractive, as the present system isn’t working. We need a system in which all parties benefit from farmers to processors, to retailers and consumers. We negotiate on a regular basis with all the supermarkets and the prices we can achieve for our cheese are reflected in the prices we can pay local farmers for our milk.

Many supermarkets pay more for milk to be sold as liquid to shoppers than we can pay for milk which is used in the manufacturing process. This boosts their credentials with the public and farmers, but leaves manufacturers struggling with supermarket cheese prices which force down the prices of the remaining milk in the market place.

Furthermore, supermarket pricing often fails to reflect the provenance of food. Our campaign to persuade shoppers to ask for Real Yorkshire Wensleydale, by introducing a stamp of authenticity on packages, is designed to encourage supermarkets to stock local Wensleydale.

We are also campaigning to achieve European protected status for the brand.

Locally-made Wensleydale cheese can be a little bit more expensive than cheese made in large food factories elsewhere in the UK. These cheeses do not use milk from farms in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, where environmental rules rightly maintain the size of fields and beauty of the countryside, but also feed through to the cost of milk by preventing industrial scale productivity.

A supermarket ombudsman could explore these issues. The Conservative spokesman, Nick Herbert, was right to say any ombudsman should be completely independent and located in the Office of Fair Trading.

This is already the view of the Competition Commission.

This proposal is not just in the interests of the producers, who sometimes believe they are unfairly treated by the supermarkets, but also in the interests of the consumer. Producers need the confidence to innovate and invest, as we are trying to do in Wensleydale. Confidence comes from knowing your products can reach the market place with a fair price. In the long term customers need to have choice; without it there is a market failure and producers and farmers disappear. Where there is market failure the Government has a responsibility to act to ensure a fair market.

DAVID HARTLEY Managing director, Wensleydale Creamery, Hawe