THE chief executive of Scotland Food and Drink, James Withers, has told The National that Scottish brands need to be promoted and protected worldwide.

Speaking exclusively to The National nearly three weeks into our Save Our Scotland Brand campaign, the man chiefly responsible for growing our food and drink industry also said it is in the interest of retailers and shoppers alike that items produced in Scotland are clearly labelled as such.

He said: “What we have been seeing over the last 10 years is a national identity building for Scottish food and drink, and that has the strongest resonance in Scotland. We know the vast majority of Scottish shoppers and consumers want to be able to identify Scottish products on shelves.

“We know this is true for all supermarkets, that if they have a store in Scotland then shoppers walking through that store want to be able to identify products that are from Scotland. Our strong advice to retailers is that it is absolutely in their own interests and in the interests of shoppers for a product to be labelled as Scottish.”

Made in Scotland is also seen as a guarantee of quality: “Increasingly, that Scottish brand is gaining traction south of the Border as well. In the markets like London we know that, on restaurant menus for example, Scottish is a key descriptor used for premium and high-value products.

“We are working with all the retailers to try and spread that message as much as we can, and there has been a lot of progress on that front.

”Internationally as well, with the value of food exports having more than doubled in the last ten years – and we are heading for another record year in 2017 – there is real growth that has been driven by the Scottish brand.

“Ultimately there is a huge growth opportunity for Scottish food and drink over the coming years in the markets at home and overseas and building that brand identity is a critical part of that growth because it really does resonate with shoppers whether they are shopping in Stranraer or Shanghai.”

The National has shown how Brexit is a threat to Scottish exports in general, and Withers is adamant that Scotland’s top brands must get protection no matter what happens over the next 16 months.

He explained: “The regulatory landscape is a little bit muddled and we need to think about how we protect that a definition of Scottish going forward. There are no hard and fast rules about what should go on packaging, though there are some legal requirements about Scotch Beef, for example, as that name has Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status – it cannot say Scotch Beef if the animals have not been born bred and slaughtered here.

“Some of our most iconic products have PGI protection, such as Scottish Salmon which is the UK’s number one food export, and Scotch Beef and Scotch Lamb as well as the likes of Arbroath Smokies and Stornoway Black Pudding. The PGI protection is absolutely critical and high on the priority list post-Brexit will be the need to maintain that protection, so the UK Government is going to have to prioritise that protection by creating its own PGI register.

“We would then register these products in the UK and give them protection, just as Scotch Whisky already has, and then ensure when we are dealing with Europe that they are protected.”

There has been criticism of the UK Government over its failure to ensure that PGI rules were written into the European Union’s CETA agreement with Canada and Withers says that must not happen again. He said: “When we are negotiating new trade deals with other countries, whether it’s Canada or elsewhere, we need that protection mirrored there. The experience we have seen with the CETA deal was that it was not prioritised highly enough.”

Withers recalled the former Scotland The Brand exercise which was abandoned in Jack McConnell’s time as First Minister, largely because it had started under the John Major Government, and mused whether something similar could happen again. “I think there is going to be an increasing debate about this in the industry,” he said, “because the stronger the Scottish brand becomes, the more at risk it is from copycats.

“That’s been an issue for the whisky industry for a long time, and it is going to be an issue for our salmon industry with the danger that salmon from elsewhere gets passed off as Scottish. Ten years ago this wasn’t a hot debate in the food and drink industry because we didn’t have the strength of brand that we do now, and our brand ultimately will be as strong as our ability to define it and then police it – I think this whole debate will open up again.”

Withers made the point that underlying the reputation for quality that Scottish food and drink has gained is genuine progress in many fields.

He said: “Yes it’s about the taste and quality of the food itself, but it’s also about food safety, animal welfare, environmental protection, innovation and heritage and history.

“We find these different elements appeal to different markets, so that in China the overriding issue is food safety, in Japan they take that as read and they are interested in the environment while in America it’s more about history and heritage – there are a lot of different elements to our Scottish brand.”