A secret shopper survey has found that the majority of supermarkets in Scotland are stocking British or Scottish lamb.
NFU Scotland’s secret shoppers have examined over 3000 packs of lamb on Scottish supermarket shelves in recent days.
The results showed almost 80 percent of lamb as British – a marked improvement on Easter 2017.
This comes while many sheep farmers across the country are hard at work in lambing sheds as the new crop of lambs are born.
The secret shoppers, when counting packs of chilled lamb in stores across the country, have found many retailers are giving shoppers the opportunity to buy British lamb ahead of the Easter weekend.
The union’s shelf watch has indicated that shoppers should be able to find Scottish lamb available in most major supermarket chains.
However, disappointed secret shoppers found no Scottish lamb identified in the aisles of Asda and Waitrose stores visited.
Significant increase
After counting 3,032 packs of fresh lamb, in almost 50 stores, the union identified that almost 77 percent (2,343 packs) were found to be labelled as British.
This is a significant increase over last Easter when only 44 percent of packs were found to be produced in the UK.
Farmers were "justifiably angry" at the level of imported lamb products on supermarket shelves last Easter.
This year, farmers wrote to all major supermarkets asking them to commit to offering local lamb.
Having previously made commitments to go 100 percent home-produced in the UK, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Aldi and Co-op were found to be honouring their commitment other than nominal volumes of organic New Zealand lamb found in Marks & Spencer stores.
'Boost'
Commenting on the results, NFU Scotland President Andrew McCornick said it is a "boost" to see retailers support Scottish and British produce.
“Today’s results back up our belief that the season for home-produced lamb availability could be extended with retailer support, and we recognise the efforts being made by Aldi, Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Morrisons.
“It is disappointing however to see Sainsbury’s, the UK’s second largest retailer, stocking more than 50 per cent imported product, and it’s also disappointing to see no lamb labelled as Scottish available in any of the ASDA stores visited.
Mr McCornick added: “We will continue to work with retailers to see what more can be done to support domestic food, and we will ask them to work with us to secure necessary farm support following Brexit to allow sustainable food production.”
