He spotlighted lesser known cuts on his programme Jamie Saves Our Bacon and afterwards TNS data showed consumer purchases of pork shoulder roasting joints were up by 75.3 per cent last week compared to the previous week.

This equates to an extra 100,000 roasting joints and, in total, pork sales were up by 15.8 per cent in volume - an additional 500 tonnes.

BPEX Chairman Stewart Houston said: “This is fantastic and more than we could have hoped for.

“Jamie has achieved a great deal for our high welfare pig industry and this is a solid platform on which we plan to build.”

Future plans include

• Continuing the campaign for clear and unambiguous labelling, a point highlighted by Jamie
• Working with public procurement to increase their use of high welfare pork, bacon and ham
• Moving forward on the recommendation made in the EFRA Committee to set up a pig industry task force

The programme highlighted the fact that around two thirds of imports do not conform to UK minimum welfare standards and would be illegal to produce here. Shoppers who want to support higher welfare production should look for the QSM.