Local butchers first into new beef labelling scheme

Forres butchers, Macbeths are the first to be issued with a Certificate of Conformity in a new Beef Labelling Scheme. The Scottish Federation of Meat Traders (SFMTA) has been working closely with the Scottish Government to come up with a low cost solution to allow Scotland’s butchers to tell customers which farms their beef comes from.

SFMTA has sought to provide a scheme that would allow butchers to identify where their beef came from on their own websites and boards outside their shops.

In conjunction with the Scottish Government – which administers the EC regulations – SFMTA has developed a simple, inexpensive solution using its own butcher training assessors and existing evidence of passports, invoices and delivery notes, instead of reams of red tape.

Macbeths of Forres who were among the first to openly challenge the regulations were specially chosen to pilot the new scheme. They have now had claims verified that allow them to use a description of their supplying farm – Edinvale, sex, breed, breeding, animal production terms and meat maturation terms.

Owner Jock Gibson, said: “The scheme is simple enough but requires fairly onerous traceability within the butchers shop. This is not insurmountable and is an operational issue that can be addressed in the working environment.

“Reaching the best solution for butchers, farmers and customers has been more important than speed of introduction but now SFMTA are ready to help other butchers who are in need of verification of their beef labelling claims.

“I am so glad that we can legally use information garnered from the Governments own documents i.e. Cattle passports together with provable factual information that most sane citizens would take for granted as acceptable such as who you buy from and how long you have had it. This has been going on for years and has cost us a lot of money and put us at a severe disadvantage, I am indeed grateful to the SFMTA and the Scottish Government for brokering a pragmatic solution to a very silly situation.”

An application form can be requested from the Federation office.

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