“The Soil Association says it “strongly supports” the National Farmers’ Union’s complaint to Trading Standards over ‘fake’ farm branding.
The NFU has written to formally complain to the National Trading Standards over the use of ‘fake’ farm branding by retailers on some food products.
This follows concerns expressed by NFU members that the use of ‘fake’ farm labels can be misleading for shoppers resulting in them being at risk of mistakenly buying a product that differs from the product they thought they were buying.
The most recent and high profile example is Tesco’s introduction of brand names such as ‘Woodside Farms’ and ‘Boswell Farms’.
Giving its support to the NFU complaint, the Soil Association said: “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.”
