The sourcing guide has been part of my work since I joined the NFU’s Food Chain Unit in June 2016 on student placement. The guide is an easy to read, consumer friendly shopping guide that helps the great British public to support our farmers and clearly see which supermarket is best for their British shop. The guide initially comprised of five sections: beef and lamb, eggs and poultry, dairy, pork, and fruit and vegetables. However I had much bigger ideas for ways to develop it.
Our new guide on where to shop for British baking ingredients has been launched this week – but more on that later.
I think that too many people only associate raw meat and non-processed products with country of origin labelling (COOL). I wanted to use the guide to help expand the awareness of British sourcing through all of the products available on your local supermarket shelves. Processed products are often overlooked when consumers are looking for British when they shop. I hope that further developments to the sourcing guide will help to raise awareness of COOL on more processed products, and encourage consumers to actively look for the British label on packaging.
A survey carried out by a major UK retailer has revealed that baking is more popular than ever. Nearly a fifth of people said that they bake at least once a week, and almost half confirmed they bake more now than they did five years ago. And the popularity of TV programmes like Great British Bake Off is likely to encourage even more people to bake. So it seemed logical to create a guide for British baking ingredients, incorporating flour, eggs, butter and sugar.
The new guide has already caught the attention of new Bake Off presenter, Prue Leith, and I hope that this will encourage the show’s fans and baking enthusiasts to make a conscious decision to use British ingredients.
The guides, which made headlines when first released last spring, were the third most popular area on our website as of December 2016. This is a huge achievement for the Food Chain Unit, and creates a great deal of awareness around UK retailers and British sourcing.
Going forward I hope we can expand the guide further to encourage retailers to support British farmers in not just quality raw products, but also quality processed products such as cooked meats or ready meals.
As a direct result of the latest guide, Aldi have committed to working with the NFU to increase their British flour offering - a development that may have been overlooked without this work. It has also brought flour and sugar to the attention of the retailers and how they can work towards making more of these British products being available on shelf.