Woodside Farm Does Not Exist. Neither Does Rosedene Farm. Here Is How Supermarkets Are Misleading You.
Pick up a pack of pork from Tesco labelled Woodside Farms and you might picture a farm somewhere in the British countryside. You would be right to picture it. You would be wrong to think it exists.
Woodside Farms is a brand invented by Tesco in 2016. So is Boswell Farms, Willow Farms, Nightingale Farms, Redmere Farms, Rosedene Farms and Suntrail Farms. Seven fictitious farm names, all launched in the same year to replace Tesco's Everyday Value range. None of them correspond to a real farm. Meat sold under the Woodside Farms and Boswell Farms labels has been documented as coming from the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland.
And Tesco is far from alone.
What Farm Washing Actually Is
Farm washing is the practice of selling produce under invented farm brand names designed to evoke small-scale, British, traditional farming. The packaging typically features images of barns, rolling fields, animals on grass and rural scenery. The farm name sounds like somewhere real. None of it corresponds to where the food actually comes from.
The Soil Association's Head of Food Policy, Rob Percival, described it directly: fake farm brands give the sense of wholesome, small-scale production, masking the reality of industrial systems. Look behind these brands and they can also be unethical in terms of how they treat farmers. Tens of thousands of producers potentially supply into single fake brands, disadvantaging farmers as well as consumers.
What makes it misleading: Supermarkets know consumers want to support British farming and are willing to pay more for what they believe is locally produced food. Farm branding exploits that instinct, charging a premium associated with British small-scale farming while sourcing from industrial operations that may be located anywhere in Europe.
The practice is not new. It is not obscure. It has been formally referred to National Trading Standards by the NFU, condemned by the Soil Association, called out by Riverford and documented in the Guardian, Farmers Weekly and Which?. It continues regardless.
Which Supermarkets Do It
When the NFU referred farm branding to National Trading Standards in 2016 they named Tesco, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose. Here is what is documented about specific brands:
Launched seven fictitious farm brands in 2016. Woodside Farms, Boswell Farms, Willow Farms, Nightingale Farms, Redmere Farms, Rosedene Farms and Suntrail Farms. Documented supply from Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland under British-sounding labels. Still in use.
Uses fictitious brand names including Ashfield Farm. Named by the NFU in their 2016 complaint to National Trading Standards.
Uses the Birchwood Farm brand name. Also named in the NFU complaint. Documented instance of applying a Union Jack to New Zealand lamb on the basis that it was packed in the UK.
Commissioned their own survey in 2017 which found 70% of consumers objected to fake farm names and only wanted genuine place or farm names on packaging. Following this, Morrisons announced it would not adopt fictitious farm brands. One of the more positive outcomes of the campaign.
Uses the Oakham brand name for chicken. Named alongside others by the Feedback charity in their analysis of fake farm branding across the industry.
It is an abuse of power. Supermarkets like Tesco have a huge amount of power over producers, especially the smaller ones, and they think they can get away with a trick like this. Even if it is not strictly illegal, they are trying to conjure up an image of something that is not the reality.
Roger Sharpley, owner of the real Boswell Farm, whose farm name was appropriated by Tesco's Boswell Farms brand
Richard Baugh, owner of the real Woodside Farm in Nottinghamshire where he raises free-range pigs, found customers repeatedly asking whether he supplied Tesco after the brand launched using his farm name. He joined forces with the food and environment charity Feedback to challenge Tesco over the use of his name. His position was clear: the pork sold under the Woodside Farms label is not free-range, not from his farm, and the branding profits from associations his farm name had built over decades.
The Union Jack Loophole
Farm branding is one layer of the problem. The Union Jack flag on food packaging is another.
Under current UK food labelling rules, a Union Jack can be displayed on packaging if the product was packed or processed in the UK, even if the food itself was grown or raised elsewhere. This means vegetables grown in Spain, eggs from Poland or lamb from New Zealand can carry a British flag as long as the packaging operation took place in the UK.
Lidl was documented as applying a Union Jack to New Zealand lamb on exactly this basis. The lamb was not British. The packaging was.
The combination of a fictional British farm name and a Union Jack flag creates a powerful impression of local provenance that has no obligation to reflect where the food actually came from, how it was grown, or under what conditions the animals were kept.
Why It Matters Beyond Just Being Misled
For most people reading this site, the concern about food goes beyond price and origin. It goes to what was used to grow it.
When you cannot trace food back to a real farm, you cannot know what pesticides were used. You cannot know whether the produce would appear on the Dirty Dozen list. You cannot know whether it was grown under EU standards, UK standards or the standards of a country with far weaker regulations. The fake farm brand obscures all of this information behind a bucolic image designed to stop you asking.
Riverford, who supply genuinely certified organic produce under their own real name, have consistently called this out. In their Wicked Leeks publication they noted that behind fake farm brands could lie mass-produced tomatoes from unsustainable, plastic-covered Spanish holdings, or intensively reared, factory-farmed meat. There is no way to know because there is no real farm to trace.
Tesco sources chicken sold under its Willow Farms brand from Avara Foods, a major UK food producer owned by US multinational Cargill. In 2020 the Guardian and partners found that Cargill supplied multiple major retailers with chicken fed on imported soya linked to forest fires and significant land clearance in Brazil. That is what can sit behind a label showing a farmyard and the words trusted and high standards.
What You Can Actually Do
If it sounds like a British farm but you have never heard of it and there is no address, no website and no way to trace it, it is almost certainly a brand not a place. Real farms have names that appear on maps.
Red Tractor is an independently verified assurance scheme covering food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection. It is not the same as organic but it is a real standard with real audits and means the food was produced in the UK to defined standards. It is one of the more reliable signals available in a supermarket.
A Union Jack on packaging means the food was packed in the UK. It does not mean it was grown or raised here. Check the small print for country of origin, which should appear somewhere on all food packaging by law.
A veg box from a named certified organic farm removes all of this uncertainty entirely. You know where it comes from, who grew it and what was used. Riverford and Abel and Cole in the UK, and Green Earth Organics in Ireland, all supply direct from verified organic farms under their own real names. There is no invented branding and no ambiguity about provenance.
Soil Association certified organic is one of the few labels in a supermarket that represents a genuinely audited standard. It covers pesticides, animal welfare, environmental impact and supply chain transparency. No fake farm brand can carry it because the certification requires a real, traceable, inspected farm.
Supermarkets are counting on the gap between what their packaging suggests and what most people will bother to investigate. Closing that gap is exactly what this site exists to help with. Woodside Farm does not exist. The farm that grows your food does. It is worth knowing which one it is.
Real farms have names that appear on maps. Start there.
Sources: NFU complaint to National Trading Standards (2016) | Feedback charity, Total Bull award and Tesco fake farm campaign (2017) | Farmers Weekly, Tesco fake farm brands called out (2017) | Sustain, Tesco wins Total Bull award (2017) | Wicked Leeks by Riverford, Fake Farms and Ugly Truths (2024) | Morrisons consumer survey on farm branding (2017) | The Guardian and partners, Cargill and deforestation in the Cerrado (2020) | Soil Association, Rob Percival, Head of Food Policy, quoted in Wicked Leeks (2024)
WANT THE FULL PICTURE?
Jeremy Grantham covers pesticides, industrial farming and why the chemicals in our food supply are one of the most important and least discussed public health issues of our time.
Watch the full Jeremy Grantham interview →