Oh Tesco you fibber!!

Could you really imagine them calling them "Third Industrial Estate after the Ring Road"??
Lies, damn lies, statistics and marketing I suspect!

Its certainly misleading for sure but I'm not sure they are actually telling lies if they've already admitted the farms are fictional.
I think they are replacing their basics ranges with these products from what I could see this morning.

Very naughty. We all like to think we wouldn't be taken in by this, but clever marketing is a very powerful tool. How many times have I found myself turning away from a 'basics range' item and buying the next one up, in a nicer package, because it's 'probably better'?

I thought the "farms " in the brand names in all these retail places were all made up ? I mean they are all sort of Enid Blyton sounding

What's sad is that they feel they need to.
I don't think it's any worse than using the little red tractor. How often do you see a little red tractor on those farms?

I don't think it's lies or naughty, it's a business using nice sounding names for it's produce, it was ever thus.

Getting back to their old tricks - taking us for mugs.

I went to buy some chicken portions in a huge Tesco on Thursday; because it was an unfamiliar store I had to ask where they were. A nice young man (a manager) tried to offer me the new brand of chicken portions; 'they are very very cheap' he said. I told him that I was buying them for DD and only free-range or organic would do thanks.
They are obviously pushing them. And they will give them a nice, rural-sounding name, it's a marketing ploy.
The chicken hasn't come from a warehouse in the middle of London of course, it will have come from farms but I'd like to know what sort of farms they are.

Why don't they use the names of the actual farms on their produce?
DD and SIL send their produce off in boxes with either the name of their farm or their brand on them; one supermarket keeps them in their boxes, the other one tumbles them out into a pile.
But, of course, I suppose the Tesco chicken goes to a central place to be processed for the stores.

Pretty much all the supermarkets do the same thing. There was a big fuss a while ago about M&S using fake farm names on their chickens and salmon.

Some fruit has the name of the grower on it. Anyway won't matter soon....Elizabeth Truss has just announced the food industry is going to regulate itself..that will be good for us all. Consumer confidence will be sky high!!

Surely food manufacturers have always gilded the lily. Look at the adverts in the back of any old cookery book. Remember a chain of grocery stores called Maypole? What about 'Mother's Delight' and all the faux nostalgia adverts Warburtons and Mc Donalds are currently running?

We are all intelligent, educated and sophisticated,I do not just mean Gransnetters, I mean British consumers, surely none of us takes anything on face value, especially from supermarkets and international companies.

MOnica why do you think companies spend billions on advertising and packaging? We are all influenced..not realising it and saying one is not incluenced by it is what the PR advertisers are hoping for ..they really have done their job then

And the farm names of course are dearer than the basics?

Some of the basics are really good value.

I think it is lying and I think it should be illegal. If you place the name of a farm on a product, it is quite natural for people to assume that such a place exists - and, given the names sound very British - many people will also assume that that farm is in the UK.

Monica I think I am reasonably intelligent and fairly knowledgeable about marketing ploys but I would make such an assumption.

I really don't understand why some people are so keen to defend the indefensible. The food industry has quite enough lobbyists influencing government without ordinary consumers fighting its corner as well.

How right you are Eloethan in everything you say. I think a good dose of legislation is required. Penstemmon - like you I'm tired of hearing those words self regulation - it's a nonsense!

PS I find it truly depressing what the food industry gets away with.

I would never say I was immune to being influenced by adverts, but I do think we all have the power to use our common sense when presented with the most egregious examples and supermarkets and food manufacturers using cosy farm images and names to sell their products is so well known and has been going on so long that I am amazed that they still find it worth their while to do it or any consumer still falls for it.

To be fair it is not just Tesco. I have some stewing steak in the freezer from Lidl.
It says on it 'Birchwood Farm'. This creates a cosy impression in one's mind of a picturesque farm, of the sort which might feature in a Ladybird book.
On examination, the address is given as 'Dunbia, Bamber Bridge, Preston.'
A quick google gives this.
www.dunbia.com/Our-Products/Dunbia-Beef

And it turns out to be a meat processing conglomerate.

i agree with you monica that if you are thinking rationally, you would immediately realise that Birchwood Farm was probably a euphemism for something else, but perhaps when you're rushing through the supermarket tryoing to think of something for dinner, those sublimiunal advertising ,messages get through.

We just bought some honey from a local honey farm and it was only when reading the small print on the label when we were about to use it that we found the honey had been produced in Hungary! We were trying to support a local business!

Don't mention honey you'll set me off again

All companies try to come up with product names that make their product sound more attractive.
Even M&S, who many trust have LochMuir salmon, guess what, no such loch exists.

I do not even look at brand names when shopping. I am more likely to be reading the label to check provenance and details of what is actually in the packet. To take pompa's example. When I buy smoked salmon I am checking out whether it is farmed or wild salmon, because I do not buy farmed salmon. I usually have to study the packet fairly carefully for the farmed salmon producers are good at the misleading language game. I have smoked salmon in the freezer at the moment. I haven't clue what brand it is or in what country it originated, but I do know that it is not farmed salmon.

In the past I have always associated the cosy farm names; Orchard Cottage, Willow Farm etc, with poor quality foods; watery soups, beans, more watery sauce than bean, poor quality meat products, processed cheese. You buy it once, find it disgusting and note and remember never to buy that brand again.

I agree Monica in fact last year bought some lemon curd from the big garden centre foodshop near me, and it was called some cosy name like that( which is not why I bought it, I just wanted to buy lemon curd and we were there) and after one taste ( it was truly awful) I threw it away.