British facings refer to the amount of products that consumers see on the supermarket shelf where the country of origin is from Britain.
Aldi, Co-op, Budgens, M & S, Morrison’s and Waitrose have maintained 100% beef and lamb product facings throughout August 2018, demonstrating their support for British farmers. Aldi, Co-op and Morrison’s continue to support British farmers all year round, The other named retailers are taking a best in season approach to sourcing.
Asda have reduced British lamb lines by 20% which is hugely disappointing as we are currently in peak of the British lamb season. British beef has seen a reduction of 8% since the results from last year, which is a step backwards for Asda. Although Tesco have increased their British lamb by 12% over the last year, only 69% of the lamb facings in store were British. There has been a decrease of 5% on British beef sourcing since last year, with only 65% of beef facings in store being of a British country of origin.
With the uncertainty posed by Brexit and the potential that we could default to harsh WTO tariffs on imported meat, supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda have an opportunity to support British farmers and source beef and lamb from trusted UK farms.
The NFU will continue to meet with individual retailers to further understand their sourcing strategies.
