When choosing food in the shop or online, we are often drawn to those products marked as home-grown items. This is not only out of a sense of wanting to support our own farmers, but the knowledge that such domestically-produced items will be of a high quality.
It is important, therefore, to ensure that such items are labelled correctly and prominently so that when shopping – either in the supermarket or online – it is clear to see which products are from Britain.
With this in mind, last summer I joined more than 100 parliamentary colleagues in supporting the call for a ‘Buy British’ button on supermarket websites. We wrote to supermarket chief executives making clear that our ask was simple and recognised that stores are keen to support UK farmers.
With many shops around the country selling and labelling British produce as such, from fruit and vegetables to grains, dairy items, potatoes, fish and meat, what we were calling for was for online stores too, these items are collated and labelled to assist customers who want to eat British produce and support UK farmers to do so as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Over recent months we have seen most major UK supermarkets commit to including this on their online stores. Morrisons, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Waitrose, the Co-op and Tesco have all signed up to the cause.
My thanks to these stores who are backing British produce by making it more accessible to online customers.
We know from UK farmers themselves that the best way to support them is to buy British produce.
It is welcome that the Government are supporting this initiative, as part of its commitment for this country to keep producing 60 per cent of the food we consume here in the UK. It is right that the Prime Minister and the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Secretary have spoken in support of this campaign.
By eating food from this country, we can also choose to help cut down on carbon produced when importing goods from overseas.
As confirmed to me in January by the Food, Farming & Fisheries Minister, the Government plans to provide consumers with more information about how and where food is produced, with these proposals subject to a public consultation which concluded last week.
These measures include ensuring clearer information to consumers about the production system in which animals were reared.
It is right to provide customers with as much information as possible about the products we can buy so we can make an informed decision about how we spend our money.
Henry Smith MP
