Offers | Cubana Bar-Restaurant

Food sourcing, animal welfare and ethical policy

Animal welfare as well as food quality are our top concerns. All of our meat and eggs are free-range, Freedom Foods or organic (organic animal welfare standards are at least as high as free-range). With the exception of our Spanish organic chorizo, all of our meat and eggs are UK-produced, reducing transport. Free-range and organic products also tend to taste better and are lower in fat. If you have any questions, please email us at info@cubana.co.uk

Beef - we use only prime beef from UK-farms.

Chicken - our UK-raised free-range chicken all comes from farms in Gloucestershire and the surrounding counties which supply Freemans of Newent, an established free-range poultry company. Freemans distribute to us through Shire Foods, one of the country's most established free-range butchers

Pork - we only use UK-produced free-range or Freedom Food pork. Our free-range pork is raised mainly on two farms, Amberley Vale Farm in Gloucestershire and Plantation Pigs in Surrey. Our Freedom Food Pork comes from Donald Russell of Inverurie

Eggs - our free-range eggs come from Farmgate Eggs which delivers free- range and organic eggs on behalf of several farms

Chorizo - organic chorizo is our only meat product which is not UK-sourced. Our chorizo is produced from free-range pigs, farmed humanely on organic land by the Martin brothers in Avila, whose herd of 1,200 pigs roam the lowlands of the Sierra de Gredos mountains. The pigs are fed on a wild diet, balanced with organic maize, oats, soya, and chestnuts

Seafood - we do not serve lobsters for welfare reasons and are currently improving our supply to ensure that our seafood is caught with minimal risk to other species - long line fishing and many net types, for example, catch and kill huge numbers of seabirds, dolphin and turtles. We are also working with our supplier to ensure that our seafood is from sources certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Most of our fresh tuna comes from sustainable stock in the Maldives, where it is caught by the rod and line method. Rod and line fishing is sometimes called 'dolphin-friendly' as it causes far less damage to other fish species, along with dolphin, seabirds and turtles which can be trapped in tuna nets or hooked on long lines

Prawns - we serve farmed King Prawns rather than the wild species. This is because prawn trawlers kill an estimated 150,000 marine turtles a year, as well as a huge number of other species including seahorses and dolphin. Prawn trawlers typically catch 5-10kg of other species for every kilogram of prawns. Much of this by-catch has to be dumped dead or dying back into the sea.

The environment and fair trade - because all of our meat and eggs (except for chorizo) is UK-sourced, their 'food miles' are limited. However, UK-sourcing is not an option for our citrus and tropical fruits, although we do buy British strawberries in season. Food miles issues are also complex - trade with the less-developed countries, which produce tropical fruits and sweet-potato, is important for them to become more prosperous; and farming in tropical climates is usually less energy-intensive than in cooler areas, which helps to counteract food miles.

Fruit + veg - all of our fruits and vegetables are fresh, including papaya, mango, guava, pineapple, limes, oranges, pink grapefruits, passion fruits and banana. We also serve fresh salads and use fresh cilantro (coriander) and flat leaf parsley. We use fresh peppers and chillies and both fresh and canned tomaotes where the quality can sometime be better than fresh for some recipes (canned tomatoes are always picked ripe). We use both fresh coconut and coconut cream. We also use dried garbanzo beans (chickpeas), black, red and white beans and ground maize. As far as possible we try to ensure that all of our ingredients are GM-free.

Overall, we concentrate on providing fresh and healthy food with high standards of animal welfare, while reducing the environmental impact by moving to more organic products

The above supplier information is subject to occasional change due to non-delivery, or other issues outside of our control