The truth about supermarket "farm fresh" labels

Spend ten minutes in any major supermarket and you’ll find a dozen products labelled "farm fresh". The phrase has no legal meaning and no certification body controls it. Anyone can use it on anything.

Look at the small print. Three of the supermarket "farm fresh" cheddars on shelves this week are made in factories using milk pooled from up to 200 farms, then aged in a centralised facility 130 miles from the dairy. The "farm" in the marketing is a stock-image country lane on the packet.

The word that does mean something is "Farmhouse" when followed by "PDO" — for cheddar specifically, the West Country Farmhouse Cheddar PDO designation is legally enforceable. The cheese must come from one of fifteen farms in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset or Dorset, made on the farm where the cows are kept, set with traditional rennet, and aged a minimum nine months. PDO without the geographical anchor — Stilton PDO, Stinking Bishop PDO, Single Gloucester PDO — is similarly meaningful.

"Farmhouse-style" tells you only that the manufacturer wants to sell you something that evokes a farm. It is not a quality marker.

If you want food where "farm" actually corresponds to a farm, look for the producer’s name and address on the label, the farm postcode, and a website with photographs of the people involved. None of those are guarantees, but their presence raises the floor.