Janauary 16, 2006

Scottish meat industry gets GBP1-million marketing grant

The Scottish meat industry has received a GBP1-million EU grant to promote beef and lamb export activities in the next three years.

The Scottish meat sector's economic development body Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) will be launching its "biggest advertising campaign ever undertaken by QMS in Europe," announced QMS interim chairman, Donald Biggar.

Already in the plans are 1,000 days of in-store demonstrations and tastings in Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands in Year One of the campaign.

It is the first time Scotland has secured an EU grant aid to be spent solely to benefit the Scottish industry.

The EC has approved a total of 25 programmes in 14 countries to provide information on and to promote agricultural products in the EU. The total budget of the programmes is EUR51 million, of which the EU will contribute half.