Farm assurance schemes and "farm assured" labels can now be found on many of the food products we routinely buy. It was not always so.

Over the last forty years consumers in the UK have witnessed marked changes in food production and its sale through the retail chain. At the production level, agriculture has intensified and gone global, providing cheap food and fantastic choice while at the retail level, supply has become dominated by a small group of supermarket chains, very much at the expense of traditional outlets.

The effect of these changes has been to distance consumers from food production and farming systems to such an extent that the public's knowledge about agriculture is now very limited. This has fostered a crisis of confidence in agriculture, something that BSE and foot and mouth disease have only appeared to confirm.

Contrary to much of cynicism about agriculture in the UK that has been pedalled by the media, the industry has a good record on food quality, welfare and environmental protection even if in the 1980's these were distorted by the production bias of EU subsidies. It is belated therefore, that the industry is only now becoming able to reassure its customers through farm assurance schemes.

The following pages in this section provide an overview to the main marques that are found on food in the UK, the farm assurance schemes themselves and the certifiers that visit farms and check standards. Please follow the dynamic menu system above or follow this farm assurance schemes link for a text sitemap.

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