By Steve McLean, M&S Food Head of Agriculture & Fisheries Sourcing

Today we’ve launched our latest Farm to Foodhall advert featuring Tom Kerridge. Throughout the summer he’s touring M&S’ Select Farms up and down the country to see the lengths we go to, to deliver the quality M&S food is known for.

But quality isn’t only about taste for our customers. It’s about products made with highest provenance, animal welfare and environmental standards. Even Tom himself says “I want to be able to trace my food back to where it’s come from and who’s made it – provenance really is fundamental to me.”

This week he visits Cowley Farm, where James and Anna King are producing exceptional Aberdeen angus beef for us. We can trace all M&S products made from James and Anna’s cattle right back to the animal they came from – we’re the only UK retailer who does this and we’ve been doing it with all our beef suppliers since 2015.

Not only that – we’re leading the way in sourcing our Beef more sustainably, too. It means all our beef that comes through our Pathway Farming – from farmers like James – has the lowest carbon footprint in the industry. 

This is really important to us, because farm emissions are a significant proportion of the indirect emissions that come from food at M&S. In 2021 we set out our ambitious target to be net zero by 2040, a full ten years ahead of the Government’s UK-wide strategy, and understanding where our emissions come from and taking action to drive this down is key.

That’s why we’ve started working with a select number of beef farmers through our Pathway Farming partnership, like at Cowley Farm, to identify opportunities to reduce carbon emissions from beef rearing, such as changing what we feed livestock, or driving down emissions on our farms by being more efficient with the use of fuel and fertiliser, and becoming ever more efficient.

The action we’ve taken has made a tangible difference. A recent Carbon Footprint Life Cycle Analysis undertaken by industry experts, SAC Consulting who compared M&S Pathway Beef against standard UK breeder-finisher systems, has shown that our Pathway farmers are able to produce beef with the lowest carbon footprint in the industry.

This is a real achievement which both M&S and our Pathway farmers are proud of as you can hear James and his family demonstrate in the latest advert.

But we’re not stopping there.

By working with farmers like James we’ve been able to identify a clear way to bring our carbon emissions from beef farming down further and we’re excited about what this means for the future. Combined with our DNA traceability and unforgettable taste, we’re delivering the quality our customers expect from M&S, which we don’t think can be matched.