SUPERMARKETS and other retailers could follow the example of organic food producers and make sure that customers can access the provenance of everything they buy.
That’s the view of leading organic farmer Pete Ritchie who has commended The National for our Save Our Scotland Brand campaign, in which we have taken supermarkets to task, particularly for misleading labels that disguise the origin of food and drink. Although it is a very small part of the farming industry, organic farming in Scotland punches above its weight because Scottish farming in general has high standards and produces quality food. That means our organic farmers know they have to be better than their more commercial colleagues if they are to survive.
Organic farming suffered at the time of the financial collapse but fresh investment has seen sales of organic produce soar – one farm in Scotland told The National sales were up 25 per cent on last year.
READ MORE: The National launches new campaign: It’s time to Save Our Scotland Brand
That farmer, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “People are now more concerned than ever about the origin of their food and the welfare of animals, and at our farm they can see and learn about the way in which we farm.”
Organic farmers don’t just want Scotland the Brand on packaging, they believe the source of food should be something that every customer can find.
Pete Ritchie said that provenance is “absolutely key” for organic farmers, before pointing out that supermarket beef, for example, could very easily be traced back to its origins.
He explained: “Every cow in Scotland, every cow in the UK, has an individual passport number and every time a slaughtered cow comes back to us for butchery and we make it into steaks or whatever, we put the passport number of the cow on the label.
“Everyone in the industry could do that – I saw it being done in a supermarket in Italy 15 years ago. It told you exactly where the meat came from and when the cow died, but the way our supermarkets work is that they have long supply chains and they consolidate so that the individual cow disappears in that chain.
“There is no technical reason why that has to be the case – if super-markets wanted to, they could source more directly from farmers and they could preserve that level of integrity.”
Simply sticking a Union Flag on a package and saying something is British is no guarantee of quality, said Ritchie, and he sounded a warning to the entire farming industry about the post-Brexit threat of a trade deal with the USA – a deal that might see Saltires and Union Flags both pulled from packaging.
He explained: “One of the scary things in this possible trade deal is the American insistence that country of origin labelling should be removed altogether.
“Not only would we have to permit GM food to come here, you wouldn’t know which country a piece of food came from, as they see that as an impediment to trade.”
Save Our Scotland Brand appears to be a very timely campaign indeed.
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