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Vegan advocate Heather Mills has pledged to bring hundreds of jobs back to County Durham.
The successful businesswoman, who owns vegan brand VBites, has bought a factory once used to make Walker’s Crisps.
The factory was shut as part of the company’s efficiency drive, losing 355 local jobs in the process, but Mills has promised to bring back more work – with many believing she will use the space to create VBites food.
Heather Mills on This Morning
Jobs
Speaking on UK breakfast TV show This Morning earlier today, Mills said she had been planning to buy a factory in Austria, but seeing UK job losses made her change her plans, and snap up the facility in County Durham – a move described as ‘amazing’ by show host Eamonn Holmes.
Mills said: “I am pleading with the supermarkets to buy British. We have Brexit on the way, we are in this situation love it or hate it. The manufactures are leaving for Germany left, right and centre.
“I go back to my home town – and I am about to build a factory in Austria – and I find out my friend has lost her job. So I bought the Walkers Crisps factory to bring all the jobs back again.”
Like-for-like
Mills also spoke about the best way to transition from a typical Western meat-heavy diet to a vegan diet.
She said rather than ditch all processed foods straight away in favor of fruit and veg, it’s easier to switch to vegan versions of foods like burgers and chorizo.
“When you’ve had so much meat in your system for so long, it’s very putrified,” she said. “So it’s good to become a flexitarian first, slowly reduce down…then replace like-for-like…you can have a chicken korma, but it’s vegan chicken.”
