A new tasting programme is to enlist 2,000 UK consumers to help ensure PGI Welsh Lamb keeps its status as a top product.
The consumer initiative wants to assess and develop the meat-eating quality of Welsh Lamb to secure its international reputation.
Spearheaded by Hybu Cig Cymru-Meat Promotion Wales (HCC), the body aims to boost Welsh agriculture prepare for a post-Brexit world.
The tasters’ network will help HCC to set up the process for baseline assessment of the current supply chain practices, check for meat quality variation and then build an eating quality programme.
This will then help drive consistency by identifying and influencing key practices throughout the sheep meat production and processing pathways.
Dr Eleri Thomas, who leads HCC’s taste programme team, said: “This project is about ensuring Welsh Lamb’s global reputation for excellence is not only maintained but enhanced as we move into the post-Brexit trading world.
“We will be seeking to ensure that future red meat production meets the demand of an ever-changing and increasingly discerning consumer, both at home and abroad.”
This work is in conjunction with world-leading meat scientists based at the Agri-Food Biosciences Institute (AFBI) who will host the first of the three, 160-strong consumer sessions that are to take place in the next six weeks.
Each volunteer will taste test lamb samples sourced from different abattoirs and from different muscles.
This information will be used to provide a valuable insight into lamb meat eating quality as samples will be rated on tenderness, juiciness and flavour.
Each consumer will also attend a presentation that will tell them of Welsh Lamb’s nutritional values and sustainable production.
They will receive free advice on how to cook it and recipes that make for quick suppers or leisurely lunches.
“We expect an improved awareness of meat eating quality to be achieved through this project that will help to increase consumer awareness and demand for lamb meat products and also seek to ensure that farming practices are efficient, are meeting quality requirements, benefit commercial shelf-life, help towards reducing wastage and greenhouse gases and increase market resilience of the red meat sector in Wales,” said Dr Thomas.
