Red Tractor key to improving provenance transparency in food service sector

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee heard evidence from the NFU and Red Tractor on the matter as part of its inquiry into promoting British food and drink.

Ruth Edge, the union’s chief food chain adviser, claimed retailers had made a ‘step change’ in sourcing more produce from UK farmers, but the food service industry was still lagging behind.

“Sometimes the claims can be quite ambiguous, so you might have Cornwall-produced plum crumble, but actually the plums are not from Cornwall, it has just been manufactured there,” she said.

“You do not have the same stringency in the food service sector and it is a lot more difficult with it being so much more fragmented, but there is not the same focus you would see in retail.”

Some restaurant chains, notably Nando’s and KFC, do already use the Red Tractor (RT) logo.

So I had my first ever trip to @NandosUK and was very impressed to see @RedTractorFood logo on their menu. We now need to #educate the consumer on how important and valuable this little tractor is #quality #welfarestandards pic.twitter.com/NWvlefqGMt

— Olivia Richardson (@_livrichardson)

So I had my first ever trip to @NandosUK and was very impressed to see @RedTractorFood logo on their menu. We now need to #educate the consumer on how important and valuable this little tractor is #quality #welfarestandards pic.twitter.com/NWvlefqGMt

— Olivia Richardson (@_livrichardson) January 22, 2019

But Neil Parish, chair of the committee, asked RT chief executive Jim Moseley if more customers should be looking for the logo when eating out.

He said: “It would help, because if we are talking meat or livestock products or dairy products, everything under Red Tractor has to be born, reared and slaughtered in the UK so there is no concern it is coming from anywhere else.

“Clearly the work we need to do is increase the awareness of that fact with consumers, and if consumers were more aware of that and therefore could make a more informed choice, then hopefully that would put more pressure on to both the retailers and the food service operators to buy more assured product.”