SUPERMARKETS must stop scouring the world for the cheapest food they can find and support the British products consumers want.

Peter Kendall, NFU president, said there had been “real shock” consumers had been deceived over what they buy, when it emerged burgers and other meat products had been contaminated with horse meat.

He said supermarkets had put damaging pressure on processors to force down the price of food.

But he said those processors were ultimately responsible for the “fraud” against consumers, because they should have told the retailers to “get stuffed, that you cant do eight burgers for a pound.”

Mr Kendall called on retailers to source high quality, traceable products from UK farmers, and end marketing campaigns which dressed up foreign imports in a “homely Britishsounding name” to fool consumers.

He criticised Morrisons for their “Hemsley” range, which sounded like the Yorkshire market town but which used poultry imported from abroadandisproducedto less exacting welfare standards than the supermarket demands of British suppliers.

Mr Kendall said: “If theres one message thats come from the horse meat scandal, its that our consumers want to know their food is coming from as close to home as possible.”

An eve of conference survey of more than 1,000 people polled for the NFU showed 78pc want supermarkets to sell more food from British farms and 43pc said they were now more likely to buy traceable food from British farms.

Mr Kendall told the conference that within eight years, there would be another 4.5m people in the UK.

Ifpeople were tohave the opportunity to buy British, the supply chain had to start getting things right today, he added.