An Alloa butchers recently scooped a silver award with its “innovative” lamb grill sticks.

Brian Cockburn, of the High Street's James Aitken Butchers, received the silver in the Scotch Lamb Innovation Awards.

He explained: “Burgers and innovative products are becoming an increasingly important part of our business and are proving extremely popular with our customers.

“I’m a big fan of Scotch Lamb, and it sells well in the shop, so I thought I’d enter the awards to see how we got on – I never thought we’d win an award.”

The awards, which was launched as part of Quality Meat Scotland’s 2015 Wham Bam Thank You Lamb campaign, aims to showcase quality, innovative Scotch Lamb products and burgers, which have been created by Scotch Butchers Club members to meet changing consumer demand.

Products were subject to a two-stage judging process by a panel consisting of red meat industry members and the public. The judges reviewed the taste and were also keen to see how simple they were to cook.

QMS marketing executive Graeme Sharp added: “The standard of entries we received was exceptionally high and you could see that each butcher had a tremendous amount of pride for their burgers and products.

“I want to encourage customers to buy Scotch Lamb from their butcher and taste the quality of their products for themselves.”

From around the country, 26 butchers received awards for products that ranged from a Moroccan lamb burger, through lamb and chilli halloumi kebabas, to stuffed lamb noisettes and a hot and spicy lamb burger.