LABELLING of pork, bacon and gammon is still proving a minefield for consumers, becoming a 'guessing game' as they struggle to identify where the meat has come from.

According to NFU Scotland’s latest shelfwatch, which looked at almost 35,000 packs in 47 supermarket stores across Scotland, Marks and Spencer, the Co-op and Waitrose were the only supermarkets found to offer 100% British pork, bacon and gammon.

All other supermarkets were found to be stocking fresh and processed pork, bacon and gammon products from a wide range of different countries of origin, including the UK, Denmark, Holland, Germany and Ireland.

More worryingly, some own-label and branded products were labelled with more than one country of origin such as ‘Germany and Holland’ or even broadly labelled as just ‘EU’.

The results showed 6% bacon, gammon and pork packs had an unclear or confusing country of origin; 5% had mixed countries of origin on the same pack and 15% listed the ‘EU’ as the country of origin.

NFU Scotland’s food chain policy manager Lindsey Macdonald said: “The lack of transparency found on some products, particularly processed goods, is alarming and is indicative of how little care is shown to label meat that is considered anything other than ‘fresh meat’.

“It is a hard fact that the ‘last point of processing’ oval on meat packaging does not tell customers where their meat has actually come from.

“NFUS is calling on supermarkets and brands to clearly label the origin of all their pork, bacon and gammon products in order to help their customers make informed decisions without having to find the small print somewhere on the back of a pack of bacon," said Ms Macdonald. “It should never be a guessing game or an assumption to establish where your meat has come from."

The shelfwatch survey also showed that 'fake farm' branding remains a huge problem and contributes to consumer confusion. As an example, pig meat products bearing the ‘Woodside Farm’ brand at Tesco were, when examined, found to be from various countries around the EU and not one single source.

“Going forward, I intend to work closely with the supermarkets falling short to help establish better transparency for customers and to celebrate those leading the way on provenance," she added. “I will also be liaising with other bodies to establish whether any breaches in labelling have occurred. In addition, NFUS continues to lobby for better country of origin labelling following Brexit.”