The NFU has made a formal complaint to National Trading Standards over the use of ‘fake’ farm branding on food products used by some of the country’s major retailers.

The complaint comes after a Yougov survey commissioned by the NFU suggested that the use of such branding, which was recently adopted by Tesco for its fresh produce and meats, could be confusing shoppers. Respondents to the survey suggested that the British sounding names of farms used on the packaging gave the impression that the produce comes from this country.

In March, when Tesco launched its new branding using fictional farm names for whole sections of produce, which is also a policy of German-owned discounters Aldi and Lidl, the supermarket giant said some of the farm names chosen have “historically been operating farms and have been selected in partnership with our suppliers.”

Around 20 percent of almost 2,000 quizzed in the Yougov poll were uncertain whether the farm-name branding used by the retailers represented real farms.

Commenting on Friday, NFU President Meurig Raymond said, “The NFU’s legal team has looked at this carefully and as a result we are asking Trading Standards Institute to look at whether ‘fake’ farm branding complies with the relevant legal requirements.
 
“I have spoken to senior management at Tesco to highlight our members’ concerns about the use of these fake farm brands.  I urge all retailers to consider seriously the results of our survey which show that mixing imported product with British product under the same fictional farm name can be misleading to many of their customers.  I am pleased that Aldi has now made a commitment to only source British product in their fictional farm brands by the end of March 2017.”
 
Speaking on the issue at the start of this year’s Royal Welsh Show, NFU Cymru President Stephen James also said, “These fake farm brands are completely unacceptable and we believe are misleading consumers. This practice has been going on across the retail sector for a long time and enough is enough.”

Commenting on the complaint on Monday, Soil Association chief executive Helen Browning said, “The Soil Association strongly supports the NFU’s complaint over ‘fake’ farm branding. We agree that using fictional farm names to give shoppers a sense of provenance is deeply misleading. People increasingly want to know where our food comes from, and want honesty and authenticity, not deceptive veneers. Branding that uses fictitious farms threatens to undermine trust in sales from genuine British farms at a time of great uncertainty and vulnerability for all UK farmers.”