British farming bodies unite to capitalise on horsemeat scandal

Eblex, Bpex (British Pork Executive) and Red Tractor are tomorrow running a joint-campaign comprising half-page ads in papers including The Sun, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian.

The ads will highlight the provenance of fresh beef, lamb, pork and bacon and carry the copy, "Quality Assured. Now more than ever, it's important to know that the meat that you're buying comes from a trusted source."

The NFU is also running its own campaign this weekend in ten nationals, with ads stating it is "Leading the way in high standards" and telling UK consumers to "Buy British".

Tomorrow's ads may well be followed by subsequent marketing pushes. A spokesman for Eblex told Marketing that the body was monitoring developments concerning horse-contaminated meat and would react accordingly.

Meanwhile, north of the border, Quality Meat Scotland is running an eight-week £620,000 campaign co-funded by the European Union and aimed at 5.3 million Scottish consumers. The activity will push two messages, "Get Behind the Label", which features two Scottish farming families, and "Great Quality of Taste". Activity will span media including in-store, print, outdoor and digital.

Peter Kendall, NFU president, said: "British Farmers are very proud of what they produce and are quite rightly furious about this current situation.

"They feel let down by what looks like a criminal element in an isolated part of the food chain, which has certainly not helped in reassuring consumers that the food they are buying is what they say it is."

News of the ad push by farming bodies comes on the same day that Tesco said it would launch a new "farm and factory" website as part of plans to open up its food supply chain to consumers, in the wake of the ongoing horsemeat scandal.

Click to enlarge

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk