Farmers urge retailers to stock more Scottish chicken

Numerous retailers in Scotland have been urged to re-examine their sourcing practices
Numerous retailers in Scotland have been urged to re-examine their sourcing practices

Under half of all fresh chicken sold in Scottish supermarkets were labelled as being produced in Scotland, a shelf watch has found.

It was a mixed bag of results for the latest NFU Scotland survey, which looked at fresh chicken ranges in 56 supermarkets.

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 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.

Similarly, Sainsbury stocked 44 per cent Scottish in their whole bird lines, but no Scottish in their other lines.

But NFU Scotland says the real disappointment was from Tesco and Asda, where there was no sign of any Scottish chicken products on their shelves.

The poultry industry has now urged both retailers to re-examine their sourcing practices and to supply Scottish product to their stores in Scotland.

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.

"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."