Avocados scrapped from cafe's menu over environment fears
The avocado has become a staple ingredient on trendy brunch menus but a cafe in Buckinghamshire is ditching the fruit, citing fears about the environment.
Wild Strawberry Cafe say it is "plain wrong" to continue serving meals such as avocado on toast when the popular superfood is flown thousands of miles around the globe before reaching our plates.
They told their customers in an Instagram post: "As of today, we will no longer be serving avocado in the yurt. This.is.not.a.joke."
The cafe on Peterley Manor Farm - which uses avocados in some of its most popular dishes - said the demand for the fashionable "superfood" was driving criminal cartels in Mexico.
Wild Strawberry said it "thought long and hard" but wanted to keep its focus on locally sourced ingredients while addressing the issue of food miles and sustainability.
It said: "At a time when climate change concerns have never been more real, transporting ingredients in fuel guzzling planes from Central and South America, Africa and beyond just to satisfy our whim for the latest food trend, when we have a plentiful supply of perfectly delicious, nutritious food on our doorstep, is just plain wrong."
The Instagram post added: "The western world's obsession with avocado has been placing unprecedented demand on avocado farmers, pushing up prices to the point where there are even reports of Mexican drug cartels controlling lucrative exports.
"Forests are being thinned out to make way for avocado plantations.
"Intensive farming on this scale contributes to greenhouse emissions by its very nature and places pressure on local water supplies."