This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

The owner of a local Budgens supermarket has defended selling squirrel meat as a sustainable way of feeding people and says it has a "lovely" taste.

Andrew Thornton, started selling the meat about five months ago after requests from customers at his Budgens store in Crouch End, north London.

"There are too many squirrels around, we might as well eat them rather than cull them and dispose of them," he said.

Thornton sells up to 15 squirrels a week when they are in stock.

The animal welfare group Viva accused Budgens of profiting from a "wildlife massacre".

Its founder and director, Juliet Gellatley, said: "If this store is attempting to stand out from the crowd by selling squirrel, the only message they are giving out is that they are happy to have the blood of a beautiful wild animal on their hands for the sake of a few quid."

Thornton rejected the claim: "That's not the case at all. If we are selling 10 or 15 a week I don't think that falls into the definition of a massacre."

He predicted more people would eat squirrel in the future.

"I think it's lovely. It's bit like rabbit. I think there will be a lot of fuss about this now, but in a few years it will become accepted practice that we eat squirrels. People don't bat an eyelid now about eating rabbit," he said.

Thornton buys the meat from a game supplier in Suffolk, the Wild Meat Company, but said he hadn't stocked it for several weeks because the firm had run out of squirrel while it focused on other game products.

"We would like to get it back on shelves as soon as we can. We are a mainstream supermarket but we take a very strong sustainability stance," he said.

"We got into it because we had requests from customers. There are a lot of people who understand sustainability issues around here."

Thornton claimed that squirrel meat is more sustainable than beef. "It takes about 15 tonnes of grain to produce one tonne of beef, which is not sustainable.

"Squirrels will be culled anyway. You have two choices. Either you dispose of them or you eat them."

The actor and Viva patron Jenny Seagrove said selling squirrel meat was "unbelievable".

"Anyone who cares about wildlife, as I do, should be appalled at Budgens for allowing this," she said.

A spokesman for Musgrave, which operates Budgens, told the Daily Mail: "As our retailers are independent, they therefore have the right and ability to secure products that Budgens do not offer for sale, within their individually owned stores."