Directors from all the international offices of Food From Britain worldwide have signed up in an appeal to Defra to safeguard the future of FFB’s promotional work “Save FFB”. The directors have stared an online petition that already has several hundred signatories. “Defra has decided to stop all funding to the Food from Britain organization as from 1st April 2009 and as a consequence the FFB UK organization will be closed as from that date,” the directors said in a joint statement. “The overseas offices all have declared that they are very committed to continue the services to the UK Industry in the future as we have done for so many years. We therefore have presented a robust business plan to Defra that should make a succession of activities possible. Within this plan however we need a transitional 2-year period in which we would like Defra to support us in several ways in order to prepare ourselves for a continuation of services at a 100 per cent privatised basis.”

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for FFB said that until that date, it is still very much business as usual. “We are certainly not dead in the water and have a very active programme until next March,” she told freshinfo. “We are still firing on all cylinders.”

Those who are interested can sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/FFB/

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