NFU Scotland has said there is ‘a lot of work to be done’ after it was revealed that less than half of the chicken in Scottish supermarkets is produced locally.
The shelf watch programme looked at fresh chicken ranges in Scottish supermarkets and discounters, and despite finding that almost all the fresh chicken stocked was from the UK, only 43 per cent was actually labelled as Scottish.
The discount retailers Aldi and Lidl both came up top of the pile, as they have done on previous commodity shelf watches, with 89.5 per cent (Aldi) and 87.7 per cent (Lidl) of their product being Scottish in origin.
Morrisons scored extremely well for whole birds (88.5 per cent), but less well for breast fillets and drumsticks, pulling their overall percentage down to 60.1 per cent. Although, they still came top of the larger retailers. Similarly, Sainsbury stocked 44 per cent Scottish in their whole bird lines, but unfortunately no Scottish in their other lines.
NFU Scotland and the Scottish poultry industry has urged Tesco and Asda to re-examine their sourcing practices and to supply Scottish product to their Scottish stores after both stores were found to have no sign of any Scottish chicken products on their shelves in Scotland.
“Scotland is an industry leader in terms of quality, husbandry and all round standards, and it is important to give consumers the option to choose Scottish at the supermarket.”
Following on from the results of the shelf watch, NFU Scotland Poultry Working Group chairman, Robert Thompson said: “What these shelf watch results show is that although there is an appetite for Scottish chicken in supermarkets there is still a long way to go in achieving the kind of numbers we would hope to see.
“Praise has to be given to Aldi and Lidl who have shown a clear commitment to Scotland’s chicken producers. There is clearly a lot of work to be done with many of the larger supermarkets and NFU Scotland is keen to meet with these supermarkets and discuss how we can move forward and improve availability of Scottish chicken on Scotland’s shelves.
“Scotland is an industry leader in terms of quality, husbandry and all round standards, and it is important to give consumers the option to choose Scottish at the supermarket.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
