Store visits conducted throughout October by a store auditing agency on behalf of EBLEX for its regular Beef Watch survey confirm that more pre-packed, fresh/chilled, beef from the Republic of Ireland (ROI) is being offered by multiple retailers – and the proportion of home produced, UK/British, beef on display is in decline.
There has been a significant drop in the use of British beef on shelves from 83 per cent British in October last year, to just 74 per cent. The decline is primarily due to ASDA and to a lesser extent Somerfield and Sainsbury.
From October 2008 to October 2009 ASDA dropped the stocking of British beef on its shelves from 64 per cent to only 42 per cent with only slightly less damaging changes in Sainsburys (down from 81 per cent British to 73 per cent) and Somerfield (down from 71 per cent to 61 per cent).
Fortunately for UK’s beef farmers the Co-op, M&S, Morrisons, Waitrose and Budgens maintained their 100 per cent commitment to the British product while even hard discounters such as Lidl and Aldi stocked either exclusively British, or very close to it with 98 per cent.
"The most disturbing detail in this regular survey is the apparent step-change to ASDA’s commitment to British beef," said the National Beef Association’s director, Kim Haywood.
"ASDA is one of the UK’s top four supermarkets but when the NBA highlighted, in September, its disappointment that more beef from the ROI was on offer in its stores than there was beef from the UK, the company told the press that the figures used were "wildly inaccurate" and totally understated its commitment to UK origin beef."
The survey covers 12 retail chains, and 240 stores in total each phase, and the NBA understands that packed beef displays in around 28-30 selected ASDA stores are audited in each phase.
The most recent surveys record that the proportion of pre-packed British beef on display in ASDA’s chilled cabinets was only 44 per cent in May, 45 per cent in August – with the latest, October, figure being just 42 per cent.
"The store audits show a consistent pattern over the last three phases, monitoring in total nearly 90 Asda stores. The consistency of results indicates the robustness of the survey," said Ms Haywood.
"So far there is no sign that ASDA has increased the volume of UK beef on offer or confirmed its strenuous vocal commitment to UK beef. Among the big supermarket chains it appears to remain, by some way, the least loyal to British beef. We can only hope that when the next Beef Watch survey takes place early in 2010 that there will be more packs of UK origin beef on its shelves than there are Irish."
