Drive is on to get Scotland to eat more home-grown lamb

A RECORD-BREAKING £250,000 promotional campaign aimed at boosting the sales of home-produced lamb within Scotland will be launched next month by Quality Meat Scotland.

Laurent Vernet, the head of marketing at QMS, said he believed there was considerable scope to increase the sales of lamb in Scotland.

Historically Scottish consumers have a much lower consumption of lamb per head than south of the Border but research has revealed that in the 12 months to May 2010 there has been a significant increase in the number of shoppers purchasing lamb in Scotland.

In addition, the three-month period to 16 May 2010 saw a 23 per cent increase in volume sales of fresh lamb in Scotland compared with the previous year.

"This is welcome news. The fact that there are more consumers interested in purchasing lamb in Scotland means we are laying the foundations of a new wave of consumers. While their purchases have been light and there has been an overall decline in frequency of purchase, the fact we are introducing new consumers augurs well," said Vernet.

Possibly the best piece of research news for producers was the response to how much consumers would pay, with almost half saying they would be willing to pay more for Scotch lamb.

In addition to the lamb campaign, which will use celebrity chefs to champion the quality of the meat, QMS also announced a 200,000 project which will promote all three species of red meat - beef, lamb, and pork.

This promotion will use more than 100 livestock producers in billboard hoardings in all the main towns in Scotland. Vernet said the final details of this promotion would emerge at the official launch in a fortnight's time.

Both announcements were made at QMS headquarters where their financial figures for the year ended March 2010 were also revealed. Income was just short of 6 million with a surplus of 91,697 on the 12-month period.

QMS chairman Donald Biggar pointed out that the new levy regime was now in place and this would ensure that the work of the organisation could continue at the same level despite there being a reduction in livestock numbers.

He emphasised that the red meat industry in Scotland worked well together and QMS played an important part in this co-operative approach.

When questioned on cost controls, QMS chief executive Uel Morton said that administration costs had been cut by 3 per cent in the past year. Staff salaries were pegged to a 1 per cent increase and board costs were frozen.