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Meet our M&S Select Farmers



From the beef in your favourite pie to your centrepiece lamb roasting joint, all our M&S meat is sourced from M&S Select Farms that we know and trust. Find out more about the amazing M&S Select Farmers we work with and our top-quality products below
An Oakham Gold chicken

What are Select Farms?

We all care about where our food comes from and, at M&S, we’ve made it easy for you to find out. All of our 900+ Select Farms food products come from farmers we know and trust, and we have more RSPCA Assured products than any other national retailer. That means you can rest assured they adhere to our animal-welfare and environmental-protection standards.

Our Select Farms brand is part of our wider Plan A initiative, which is our commitment as a business to building a more sustainable future.

100% British lamb

Did you know that all our fresh lamb, from succulent steaks to family-favourite mince, is 100% British all year round? Currently we source our fresh lamb from Wales where it is best in season. We work closely with our farmers, who all share our high environmental and animal-welfare standards, ensuring only top-quality meat makes it on to our shelves.

Fancy cooking up an incredible lamb dish? Click below to discover Chris Baber’s recipes: lamb tikka shepherd’s pie and lamb flatbreads.​

Lamb steaks

M&S Select Farmer Ali Gordon

Meet lamb farmer Ali

Ali Gordon from Northfield Farm in Eyemouth, Scotland, is one of our trusted M&S Select Farmers. Ali’s lambs have plenty of space to roam, which protects the structure of the soil, and they graze on herbs and grass to help develop a fantastic flavour. Ali is also passionate about farming in harmony with the environment to ensure the farm is sustainable for future generations. She’s planted 600 metres of hedgerows to provide much-needed natural habitats for wildlife. What’s more, the farm has lots of shallow ponds for the local wading birds, and all the fresh water from the farm comes from a natural spring.

We’re setting new animal welfare standards

We are the only national retailer to sell only RSPCA Assured milk, and we pay our farmers a fair price thanks to the M&S milk pledge. Created 22 years ago, it’s a commitment from us that we’ll always pay a price that reflects the cost of production. 

Use our fresh milk to make two of Chris’s recipes: a raspberry YumnutTM milkshake and a creamy cauliflower mac and cheese.​

Glass of milk

Glass of milk

100% RSPCA Assured Oakham™ Gold chicken

We've become the first major retailer to sell only 100% RSPCA Asuured, slower-reared fresh chicken (excluding our organic and free-range fresh chicken). The higher-welfare Oakham™ Gold birds are fed a multigrain diet and have more space to roam. 

Why slower reared ? Well, we believe this more natural rearing approach means the birds have a much better quality of life, can be much more active, and can express their natural behaviours better, which will ultimately help produce a better-tasting, better-quality fresh chicken for M&S customers.​

100% traceable British beef


Just like the carefully chosen farmers we work with, we know that, when it comes to beef, great taste starts in the field. That’s why we are the only national retailer that can trace 100% of our beef back to the farm and animal it came from. So you know you’re getting the best, every time.
 

Put prime British beef centre stage with chef Chris Baber’s harissa beef and houmous kofte and Aberdeen Angus burgers with sweet potato wedges and creamy slaw.

Our British beef is 100% traceable back to every farm

M&S Select beef farmers

Meet our beef farmers

Robert Barbour from Crailinghall in Jedburgh is one of our M&S Select beef farmers. Like all our M&S Select Farmers, Robert and his sons, Graham and Scott, pride themselves on producing top-quality meat. They also work hard to encourage natural wildlife on their farm by having uncultivated field margins, large areas of hedges and woodlands and fenced-off riversides.

100% outdoor-bred pork


All our pork (excluding artisanal continental charcuterie) is 100% British, outdoor bred, RSPCA Assured and from M&S Select Farms. The pigs have access to both indoor and outdoor space and are given balls and toys to play with. From pork chops to the bacon in your BLT, all our pork tastes incredible and supports our M&S Select Farmers.
 

Need some dinner inspiration? Try our latest delicious recipes.

All our fresh pork is outdoor-bred

100% British chicken

100% British chicken

This is not just chicken… this is British M&S chicken! ALL our chicken, from fresh chicken breasts to the chicken in fuss-free prepared curries, is sourced from M&S Select Farms in the UK that share our quality, environmental and welfare standards.
 

Meet one of our free-range chicken farmers below and try chef Chris Baber’s delicious ideas that put our British chicken centre stage. Think Moroccan chicken wraps and super-juicy chicken burgers.

Meet our chicken farmer Justin

Justin Scale is the owner of Capestone Farm in Pembrokeshire in Wales and is one of our M&S Select Farms free-range chicken farmers. For the past 15 years, Justin has been our main provider of free-range and organic chicken. The chickens are grown slowly for maximum flavour and have plenty of space to roam with hay bales to perch on, room to spread their wings and even toys to play with! The free-range chickens have all-day access to the outdoors, where they forage among clover, herbs and grasses – making the meat packed full of delicious flavour. What’s more, Justin has designed his farmland to ensure the woodland and hedgerows create natural wind defences and also encourage wildlife.

M&S Select Farmer Justin Scale and family
An M&S Select Farmer inspecting his tomato crop

Fresh produce that doesn’t cost the earth

Our UK M&S Select Farms growers go to great lengths to cultivate the very best produce for our customers. To do this, protecting our precious natural resources is vital. M&S asks all UK growers to be LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) Marque certified, which means that our growers enrich diverse, native habitats and species, improve soil health and manage water and energy use responsibly.

The RSPCA is the UK’s largest animal welfare charity, operating throughout England and Wales advocating for animal welfare, rehoming animals, and conducting investigations and securing convictions for abuse of animals. The SSPCA and USPCA fulfil a similar role in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and all work together to advocate for animal welfare across the UK. In addition to this work, the RSPCA develops welfare standards for farm animals, which outline best practice in care and welfare, to ensure farm animals have a better quality of life. These standards are world renowned and used by many welfare organisations worldwide. In the UK, these standards are applied through the RSPCA’s farm assurance scheme, RSPCA Assured. RSPCA Assured works across all of the UK to support farmers who wish to raise their animals to higher welfare standards.