Supermarkets and Convenience Stores

Dan Welch asks: can we separate out the green grocers from the greenwash?

In this report:

• Rating the supermarkets
• Ethical Policies and Practice
• Company comments
• Critical views
• The independent model
• Company profiles
• A supermarket animal welfare A-Z

For many environmentalists supermarkets are a bête noire – palaces of unsustainable consumerism where the carbon-heavy, out-of-season fruits of our globalised economy are disgorged into the waiting car boots of wasteful consumers. At the same time, the UK’s biggest retailers are battling it out for the title of ‘greenest’ supermarket, with new eco-initiatives launched every week.

This paradox is nowhere better illustrated than by Wal-Mart (owner of the UK’s ASDA and Netto), long the target of campaigners of every stripe. Wal-Mart’s CEO announced in 2005 to general incredulity that the big-box monster of American retail was going green and pledged to be a “good steward for the environment”. Whilst many expected greenwash, Wal-Mart’s sustainability programme started attracting support from green luminaries like Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Adam Werbach, former head of the Sierra Club, the US’ biggest environmental group. The Wal-Mart conversion showed that huge change was afoot in the sector.

Supermarkets’ share of the UK grocery market has been steadily rising. At the beginning of the 1990s, the UK’s then ‘big four’ took just under half of the British shopper’s spending on food. Today, Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons control around three quarters of our grocery market. Tesco in particular has shown extraordinary growth, now taking a staggering one in every three pounds spent on groceries in the UK. Contributions to this extended report from campaign group Tescopoly and the New Economics Foundation below forcefully map out the negative consequences of that growth.

But isn’t the flipside of that dominance that sustainability initiatives from the big players could have a huge impact? In the US Wal-Mart introduced a sustainability scorecard for its buyers, bringing sustainability metrics into the heart of its sourcing practices. And with Wal-Mart representing 3% of the US’ GDP that’s a lot of supply chain. Charles Craypo, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Notre Dame University, who has followed Wal-Mart’s ‘greening’ in detail, thinks there are clear limits – on the bottom line. Beyond the win-win of ‘low hanging fruit’ according to Craypo “long-time bad habits” remain, such as allowing toxic run-off at its construction sites.(1) No doubt it’s cheaper to pay the fines than change the practice.

The Co-op, M&S and Waitrose put their side of the story below.

So what are we to make of it? There’s no doubting the huge strides on sustainability – if less on overall ethics – that the best of the sector has made. And there continues to be a sharp contrast with the laggards. But many would argue that the entire business model of the supermarkets, from global supply chains to central distribution hubs, is profoundly and inherently unsustainable. That’s not simply an environmental cost – with 80% of our food in the UK distributed through that network, in a world of oil dependency and oil depletion it’s also a huge social risk. We are, it is said, nine meals away from mass hunger.
But while we live in an unsustainable society, whether it’s through preference, convenience or necessity, many of us do shop in supermarkets. And there is a clear divide between the best and the rest.

Rating the supermarkets

Supermarkets impact so many social, ethical and environmental areas – from labour rights in supply chains, to sustainable sourcing, to the refrigerants in refrigerators – that they have all always scored poorly in our ethiscore system. Our ratings were originally designed on the model of ethical investment – allowing consumers to screen out companies involved in, say, the arms trade, or implicated in workers’ rights abuses. Over recent years, the proliferation of corporate social responsibility policies, business sustainability initiatives and fast moving developments in areas like labour rights in the supply chain, has meant we increasingly look to supplement our normal scoring with ratings relevant to specific sectors. In researching this report we have used a sophisticated methodology relating the key demands of civil society groups regarding issues relevant to the supermarket sector to actual policies and practice. This allows us to better differentiate between ethical performance in the sector. We have combined the ethiscores on our main Ethical Consumer table with the sector-specific 'Ethical Policies and Practice' percentage scores to give a combined score out of 100 which is reproduced in the scorecard below. The ethiscores were worth 50% of the total and the sector-specific scores also worth 50%.

How they score overall

The Best and the Rest

This methodology has confirmed the Co-operative as a clear leader on 47% with M&S also opening up a gap on the rest with its 36% score.
The majority of other players cluster around a 20 to 30% score. These are either the larger players with well-developed ethical policies like Waitrose or Sainsbury’s, or convenience stores which have attracted little attention from campaigners to take their ethiscores down.
Clearly falling behind the pack, with scores of 11% or below, are Tesco, ASDA and Netto.

Ethical Policies and Practice

Ethical Consumer investigates ethical policies in the supermarket sector using a new sector-specific methodology. Tim Hunt and Will Hodson explain more.

This set of ratings departs from our usual model. Whereas Ethiscore focuses largely on companies’ recorded behaviour, these scores derive from reported policy.
This shift of focus implies a certain trade-off. Yes, companies’ practice can sometimes diverge from their policy. Yet this approach allows us to compare companies like-on-like across every feature of their particular industry.

In producing this new rating system our primary task was to collate and categorise the arguments of civil society to get a clear picture of what others felt were important in the industry. We favoured well-established organisations (such as Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency), and looked for where they directly addressed issues in the sector and where they did primary research. We also looked at supermarkets’ own public reporting on sustainability to see what issues they thought were important.

For the sake of analysis, we then divided the issues raised into seven main areas. Final marks were weighted evenly across the following:
• Animal welfare
• Climate change
• Health
• Toxics
• Waste
• Water
• Workers’ rights

We then broke down each area into more distinct ‘general issues’. We gave greater weighting to the issues that were addressed most often by civil society and supermarkets. ‘Climate change’ breaks down as follows, with issues at the top receiving most attention.
• Forestry
• Refrigeration
• Products’ carbon footprint
• Direct emissions
• Transport
• Energy efficiency
• Electricity
• Advocacy
• Organic farming

With these ‘general issues’ set out, we then identified specific issues for which we might establish criteria. In the case of ‘forestry’ those specific issues were palm oil and biofuels.

At this point, we felt comfortable that we had identified civil society’s key expectations of supermarkets. It remained to be seen how far supermarkets were meeting those expectations.

Our second task was therefore to compare retailers’ reported policies and performance to civil society’s arguments on each of the 92 ‘specific issues’ raised. If the best policy for each issue actually addressed civil society’s expectations, it was set as the criterion for our top mark. Comparing different retailers’ policies, we were able to calibrate criteria to reward different levels of performance for each issue.

For many issues, even the best corporate policies fell far short of civil expectations. In this case, the benchmark was set by civil arguments, not best corporate practice. For other issues there was no consensus amongst NGOs as to what supermarkets should be doing e.g. labelling air-freighted food. Criteria were impossible for such issues.

For the vast majority of issues, we identified criteria that truly reward best practice and punish hollow rhetoric. These criteria have enabled us to get closer than ever before to mapping the truth of corporate sustainability in the food retail sector.

Information was obtained from publicly available sources as well as from a detailed survey sent to the retailers. Where no information was available from either, the company receives a zero score in that category.
We received survey responses from M&S, ASDA, Londis, Budgens, Morrisons, and Sainsbury’s.We received partial responses from Tesco and the Co-op. We did not receive responses from Costcutter, Premier, Booths, McColl’s, Farmfoods, SPAR, Iceland, Netto, Lidl, ALDI and Waitrose.

The results

This methodology sets the bar extremely high by using an extensive array of criteria. This is clearly reflected in the results. As you can see from the table on the right no company scores higher than 56% overall and several score zero. Only one company scores 100% in any one category (the Co-op for its reporting standards), most scores are below 50%.

There are however some clear leaders in the sector. The Co-op and M&S fair particularly well, scoring 56% and 39% respectively. Sainsbury’s and Waitrose follow close behind with 29% and 25% respectively.

Animal welfare
The Co-op scores highest in this category thanks largely to its policy on sustainable fish. It says “our goal is to operate our fish sourcing in line with the aims and objectives of the Marine Stewardship Council”.

Climate Change
M&S is top in this category. It does well across the board – from reporting its emissions, to having a clear policy to only use sustainable palm oil. It also scores well on refrigeration with, for example, commitments to switch all fridges to those using gases with the lowest climate impact.

Health
The Co-op is also rated top in this category. It has met the Food Standards Agency’s 2010 salt targets in at least 80% of relevant own-brand products and now aims to meet the targets across its entire own-brand product range (including new products) by the end of 2010. It also uses a significant amount of product labelling (e.g. five a day) throughout its own brand range.

Toxics
The Co-op and M&S came out top in this category. Both have sound policies on pesticide testing and neither use GM ingredients in their food. Both have also made significant steps in selling organic produce.

Waste
No company did particularly well in this category with Waitrose coming top with just 28%. It scored best largely due to using anaerobic digestion for its disposal of food waste.

Water
M&S was again top in this section. It has been working with NGOs in the sector, and its own suppliers, as well as managing its own ‘water footprint’.

Workers’ rights
The Co-op was top in this category due to commitments to recognise trade unions, using the Ethical Trading Initiative code for its own policy, and its continuous and significant stocking of Fairtrade products. It also carries out regular audits and monitors second tier suppliers.

Reporting integrity
Here the Co-op was top again, this time for using external assurance to declare a top rating for its Corporate Social Responsibility report and having the AA 1000 Assurance Standard (a credible third party).

Highlight
It should be noted that, for a smaller retailer, Booths have a very comprehensive report on carbon, written alongside the University of Lancaster and they should be congratulated for this.

Lowlights
Neither Iceland nor Farmfoods whose entire offering relies on freezer space had any public corporate social responsibility information relating to emissions from their freezers.

Conclusions

It would be very easy to be negative about these results. Clearly companies have not faired altogether well. The average total score for all the supermarkets is just 12%. However there are several retailers who are making significant steps forward (Co-op, M&S, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s).
This methodology, in all its rigour, provides a clear signal to all the supermarket and convenience store chains that they must do more across the board to ensure the highest standards that civil society expects from them. We plan to carry this research out again in two years to see how companies improve. We only hope that during this period the civil society groups, from which this methodology is drawn, can apply enough pressure to move supermarkets towards a more sustainable future.

A fuller description of this methodology appears in the PDF version of this article available free to subscribers or for £3 from here.

Methodology devised by Will Hodson and Rob Harrison. Research by Jo Southall, Lorraine Otieno, Heather Webb and Tim Hunt.

Company comments - The Co-op, M&S and Waitrose

The co-operative, good with ethics

Ethical Consumer talks to Paul Monaghan, The Co-operative Group Head of Social Goals and Sustainability.

Q: The Co-operative has joint ventures in China. How does the Co-operative square operations in an oppressive regime with its ethical stance?
A: The Co-operative believes that international trade, when respectful of human rights and undertaken equitably, has an unparalleled capacity to lift people out of poverty and enhance the quality of lives across the world.
It is only in exceptional circumstances that The Co-operative will suspend trading activity with a sovereign state or designated region (e.g. Burma). The Co-operative Pharmacy set up a joint venture in China to manufacture generic medicines which will be supplied to Co-operative Pharmacy customers.
The joint venture business is committed to:
• An annual social and ethical audit designed to ensure acceptable working conditions and operational standards comparable to those in the UK. This includes implementation of a comprehensive salary and benefits structure including performance bonus and social insurance.
• The Co-operative Group’s Code of Sound Sourcing. This was developed by the Group in line with the Ethical Trading Initiative base code in 2008.
• Products and ingredients which are subject to Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) licensing.
The Co-operative does not have a direct relationship with the Chinese government.

Q: The Co-operative is the country’s biggest farmer. Can you tell us about the Co-op’s contributions to animal welfare in UK farming?
A: We have undertaken many projects to improve animal welfare as this is a key priority for our customers. In our Food Ethical Policy consultation in 2007, a quarter of respondents referred to animal welfare as their greatest concern.
Back in the 1990s, we introduced the first instance of method of production labelling in the UK, when we started to label eggs from caged hens as ‘Intensively Produced’. At the time this was technically against the law but we felt it was in our customers’ interests. The law was subsequently changed and now it is a legal requirement to label method of production on all eggs.
The UK’s farming industry offers some of the highest welfare standards for meat anywhere in the world. Due to this, there are pressures on the UK farming industry as companies use imported meat, often produced to lower welfare standards, which is cheaper than the UK equivalent. We have sought to move the majority of fresh meat we sell to UK production. Currently all our own-brand beef, pork (including bacon, sausages and ham), chicken, turkey and duck come from UK farms. We also source British lamb when it’s in season, but require New Zealand lamb year round to meet our demand.
Whilst we recognise that UK farmers have a great track record on welfare, we are seeking to offer a higher welfare standard over and above the present Red Tractor benchmark. To achieve this, in 2007, we replaced standard fresh whole chickens with chickens reared to a higher welfare standard that we called ‘Elmwood’. Elmwood standard whole chickens were such a success that we have moved other poultry products to “Elmwood” standards. As of 2010, these include all of our fresh and frozen raw chicken, fresh and frozen turkey, fresh and frozen BBQ chicken products, ready-to-eat chicken products and fresh breaded chicken products. We are continuing to look for further opportunities to introduce our higher welfare Elmwood standard on to other products.

Q: Friends of the Earth are calling on other UK supermarkets to resign from the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), which they accused of trying to “sneak GM crops into the food system” (see p.15). What’s your view?
A: We are not currently members of the RTRS, because they do not have a robust system of delivery for certified soya at this time. We are monitoring the situation until such a time as they have a credible system in place and will re-evaluate our position then. If the RTRS can deliver on its vision and supply the global market with soya produced without contributing to deforestation, whilst addressing social issues and improving workers’ rights, it should be recognised as a positive step in dealing with one of the key drivers of climate change.

Q: In 2009 the Co-operative launched a new Community Plan – can you tell us what that involves?
A: Back in 2008, we undertook the largest consultation of its kind, inviting our members, colleagues and customers to give us their views on what community issues we should focus. The results helped us to shape our Community Plan, highlighting three areas on which to concentrate our energy and funding:
Inspiring Young People – From gaining qualifications, experience and self-belief, to bringing about change in their communities, we’re offering opportunities for young people to make real differences to their lives.
Tackling Global Poverty – We want to help bring about a fairer world, through ethical trade, co-operative support, ethical finance and campaigning.
Combating Climate Change – We’re working hard to reduce our emissions and help communities to reduce theirs, whilst campaigning against toxic fuels.
In each instance, we’re highlighting co-operative solutions to everyday problems.

This isn’t just a sustainability initiative...

Three years ago M&S published Plan A, widely regarded as an impressive commitment to sustainability and ethics. We asked Rowland Hill, M&S’ Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Manager, to tell us how it’s going.

M&S published its five year Plan A commitments in January 2007. This was a new and unique approach to sustainability. It was personally driven by Chief Executive Sir Stuart Rose and supported by a high level of communication to employees, customers, suppliers and sustainability specialists. It also moved beyond building on traditional strengths such as animal welfare and directly addressed many of the company’s weaknesses such as packaging and in-store waste.

In many ways Plan A belonged just as much to the organisations who had helped to shape it and were now Plan A Partners; WWF on environmental issues, WRAP on waste, Oxfam on clothes recycling, BRE on sustainable buildings, British Nutrition Foundation on health, Rainforest Alliance on wood sourcing, the Ethical Trading Initiative and SEDEX on supply chains, Groundwork on carrier bag reductions…the list goes on...

The result was a comprehensive five year plan covering 100 social, environmental and ethical issues.

By 2010, three years into the Plan, 62% of the commitments had been achieved and we were making good progress. Our operations had become more efficient: total greenhouse gas emissions were down by 8% including 18% less from refrigeration. Energy efficiency had been improved by 19%, food delivery fleet efficiency by 22% and we were recycling 88% our waste from our stores and 89% of waste from store construction projects. We’d also reduced food packaging by 20% and carrier bag usage by 80% (in a model now being copied by legislation in Wales).

Our products were becoming more sustainable too: 72% of all the wood we use throughout the business coming from sustainable sources and 62% of fish meeting standards developed through WWF’s Seafood Charter programme. In 2009 we were the world’s largest retailer of Fairtrade cotton clothing with an expanding range of food and flowers. We’d also set an animal testing cut-off date for all our toiletry, cosmetic and household products.

Our supply chains were working with us to improve working conditions based on ten Ethical Model Factories, and environmental performance was being developed through four ‘Eco’ factories. And finally, we’d made sustainability easier and more rewarding for our customers. It was M&S who initiated the work with WRAP that eventually resulted it the industry-wide use of standardised packaging recycling labels. The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange provided incentives to recycle unwanted clothing and help Oxfam at the same time – and around 1.5 million customers did. We launched M&S Energy which now has over 300,000 customers attracted by incentives to reduce their carbon footprint. To celebrate our 125th Anniversary our employees and customers also helped us to raise £2.8m for local charities.

Despite this progress (and the recession) we were keen to re-energise Plan A, so in March this year we launched an updated version with 80 new commitments and the ambition to be recognised as the world’s most sustainable major retailer by 2015. This New Plan A has been adopted by new Chief Executive Marc Bolland, who hosted its launch to a group of sustainability specialists. New Plan A runs up to 2015 and places a much greater emphasis on involving customers, employees and suppliers. This includes the target for all M&S products to have a least one Plan A quality such as Fairtrade or from a proven sustainable source by 2020. We’ve also set targets on a programme to measure and encourage improvement in the sustainability performance of our suppliers, growers and farmers. Targets for farmed fish have been included in our sustainability programme as have the additional raw materials which contribute to deforestation; soy, cocoa, coffee and leather.
The best thing about Plan A, however, is that it is starting to support itself. Investments have paid-off and by the end of last year Plan A had generated £50m in additional profit which was invested back into the business.

But we’re very clear that the challenge we face in taking M&S from being ‘better’ to being truly sustainable is still a long and hard journey.

Waitrose – sourcing local, sourcing global

Ethical Consumer quizzed Waitrose’s Head of Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing, Quentin Clark, on local sourcing and supply chain scandals.

Q: Waitrose has been at the forefront of local and regional sourcing in the supermarket sector with the ‘Small Producers Charter’. Is there further Waitrose can go on local sourcing?
A: We first launched our local and regional sourcing initiative in 2001, as we recognised that customers wanted easy access to the best quality food and drink from their area. With a dedicated team of buyers, the scheme now covers over 2500 products from around 465 suppliers – ranging from local beers to condiments, burgers and sausages.
We’ve also helped nurture and support smaller suppliers who haven’t had experience in supplying a supermarket, with advice on everything from packaging, branding and recipe content. Since we started the scheme some of the smaller suppliers who we began working with through the sourcing initiative have grown to become household names like Tyrells and Baytree.
This year we have taken the scheme further by trialling a new format in our Saxmundham branch which champions local and regional produce at the front of the store in bespoke displays. The number of items available in the branch has increased significantly, with an extended range of locally produced food and drink.
The local and regional team is always seeking the very best producers especially in areas where Waitrose is expanding – and fortunately there’s no shortage of fantastic food and drink to chose from.
Most recently we have been working with 15 local suppliers in the Channel Islands in advance of opening new stores in Jersey and Guernsey next year.

Q: In 2008, a labour provider to one of the UK’s largest daffodil suppliers to supermarkets lost its licence for exploiting migrant labourers. How does Waitrose address problems of exploitation in UK agriculture, especially regarding migrant labour?
A: Our Responsible Sourcing Code of Practice, which has been in place for more than a decade, includes those who are employed on a permanent or temporary basis, directly or indirectly in the UK and overseas.
All Waitrose suppliers must demonstrate compliance with the Code of Practice, which sets out our expectations with respect to acceptable labour rights and working conditions.
Waitrose was a co-founder of the Temporary Labour Working Group – set up to establish voluntary standards on wages, hours and conditions in the UK food industry. These standards shaped the Gangmasters Licensing Act (GLA).
The GLA has made excellent progress in addressing labour standards
As a signatory to the Supermarkets and Suppliers Protocol, Waitrose works closely with the GLA and our suppliers to ensure the GLA Licensing Standards are applied throughout the supply chain to reduce worker exploitation. We also encourage all our suppliers to contact the GLA with any concerns regarding breaches of the Licensing Standards.

Q: Last year the Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition published a report that revealed workers’ rights abuses occurring in Kenyan flower farms and that supermarkets had become particularly important players in the market. What is Waitrose doing to address these problems?
A: All the flower farms that we source from are expected to meet the requirements of our Responsible Sourcing Code of Practice – which dictates high worker welfare standards. Independent audits ensure that farms meet the standards we insist on and we regularly make personal visits to farms from which we source to ensure high standards.
Waitrose and its import and export partners have invested very significantly in improving the standard of living for farm workers and their communities through the Waitrose Foundation. Established in South Africa five years ago, the Foundation has been extended to cover Ghana and Kenya. The Waitrose Foundation flower farms in Kenya are Fairtrade certified.
The Foundation operates by passing a percentage of profits from the sale of Kenyan flowers and produce into a trust to pay for educational, social and healthcare initiatives chosen by farm workers themselves. Projects in Kenya to date have included replacing kerosene lamps in workers’ homes, which were both costly to run and dangerous, with solar powered lanterns, a community educational centre with computers and the equipping of a medical centre – which has allowed women to give birth in their own community for the first time.
In total the Waitrose Foundation has now raised more than £3 million, supported more than 200 life changing projects and is helping improve the quality of life for more than 25,000 workers and their children.

Critical Views - Tescopoly, Friends of the Earth, New Economics Foundation

Stop the Chainstore Massacre

Helen Rimmer, Friends of the Earth Food Campaigner and spokesperson for anti-supermarket campaign group Tescopoly calls for control of the rampant chains.

Take a walk down your average high street and you’ll probably find it difficult to identify it over any other, with the same chains dominating the retail landscape wherever you go. Nowhere is this more evident than in the grocery sector, with a handful of companies dominating food retail.

The make-up of British town centres has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades – first as supermarket chains grew their out-of-town stores, encouraging people into their cars and taking trade away from existing retail centres. And now with the supermarket giants opening smaller-format stores in our town centres, muscling out local greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers and bakeries that give a place its distinction.

Five big retailers now control around four-fifths of our grocery market. Tesco, one of the world’s biggest retailers and receiver of a staggering one in every three pounds spent on groceries in the UK, has been frequently praised by city analysts for its aggressive expansion model. Even the Prime Minister David Cameron has jumped on the bandwagon, making a Tesco store his first port of call on a recent trade visit to China.

But what has supermarket domination meant for the true champions of our food system, the small farmers and the independent shop owners who provide us with sustainable, healthy and affordable food?

The costs of supermarkets’ aggressive expansion are being felt by small businesses, farmers and the environment, both here and overseas. Small businesses struggle to compete with supermarkets’ aggressive pricing, with new megastores inevitably drawing trade away from existing local shops. In recent times 2,000 independent grocers have closed down every year. And the current recession has put further pressure on small businesses, with one survey estimating that 12,000 small shops closed in six months in last year alone. The loss of local shops, which keep more money within the community and employ more people per unit of output, has been disastrous for local economies and town centres.

The supermarkets’ dominance of the grocery market has also given them huge buyer-power allowing them to dictate terms of trade to suppliers and drive down prices paid to farmers. While the retailers continue to post record profits – with Tesco’s soaring to £3.4 billion this year – many farmers have been operating on the brink of viability. The Competition Commission conducted an investigation into the grocery market and found the major supermarkets guilty of abusive buying practices, such as going back on agreed terms of trade and forcing suppliers to stump up the cost for promotions. It recommended a strong Code of Practice and a watchdog to enforce it. But almost three years since its final report was published – and despite commitment in the coalition Government agreement – we are still waiting for action.

A powerful supermarket watchdog or ombudsman is vital to stamp out the bullying practices of the big retailers which force farmers to intensify production – with devastating consequences for the environment – and drive many out of the industry altogether. The Government has promised a ‘Grocery Code Adjudicator’ but is stalling, with no published timetable for the legislation that is vital to give this new body its necessary powers.

In communities up and down the country a fight back against the supermarket takeover is taking place. Over 300 community campaign groups are battling to stop unwanted stores springing up in their towns and high streets. Tough planning policies at national and local levels must be introduced urgently to enable small businesses to have a greater share of the pie and to keep more money in local economies.

It’s not too late to take action for a fairer and greener grocery sector. Consumers can choose to shop local first. And if the UK government is serious about its ‘Big Society’, it must urgently introduce tough new planning laws to support local shops and distinct communities, and a powerful body to stop supermarket bullying.

Tescopoly is an alliance of organisations concerned with the negative impacts of supermarket power. You can find out more about local campaigns at www.tescopoly.org

Eating the Forests

Kirtana Chandrasekaran, Food Campaigner with Friends of the Earth calls for urgent action on animal feed.

Despite years of biotech industry PR spin, the latest survey of European attitudes to genetic modification reveals that support for GM crops has fallen. Consumers, more informed than ever about GM technology, view it as non-beneficial, unsafe, inequitable and worrying. And it’s because of public concerns about GM that UK supermarkets don’t stock GM foods and have strong GM-free policies. Or do they?

Surprising as it may seem, GM products can be found lurking in supermarket aisles in the form of meat and dairy products from animals fed on GM animal feed.
Retailers are not legally required to label GM-fed meat and dairy products, so despite giving the impression of being GM-free, most supermarkets are supporting the import of vast quantities of GM animal feed – mainly GM soy – into Europe. Furthermore, they are also silent on plans, currently afoot, to weaken European GM laws and allow small quantities of illegal GM crops into European animal feed.

Both GM and non-GM soy, most commonly imported from South America, leave a chain of destruction trailing in their wake.

Grown on vast plantations that replace wildlife-rich forests and grasslands, soy is taking over the landscape of South America. By 2020 soy will occupy an area larger than the UK, with estimates suggesting that UK imports of meat and soy in 2009 could have deforested an area twice the size of Greater London.

People are losing out too. To enable soy production, small farmers and communities are frequently evicted from their land – and livelihood. And escalating use of pesticides on soy plantations is having massive impacts on the health of people and wildlife – and all this to feed factory-farmed animals in Europe.

Some supermarkets are taking action on GM animal feed. In France Carrefour has launched a GM-free label for its meat and dairy, after discovering that 63 per cent of its customers would stop buying food products if they knew they came from animals fed GM.

Some UK retailers, such as M&S, the Co-op and ALDI, are taking action to use GM-free feed, although they could all probably do more. In fact, consumer opinion in the UK on GM animal feed is even stronger than in France. A 2009 poll showed that 89 per cent of consumers wanted GM fed animals to be labelled and that 72 per cent would be willing to pay more for non-GM products. So surely UK supermarkets should be doing much more to ensure consumers are truly able to choose GM-free food.

However, the impacts of intensively grown conventional soy are as much a problem as GM – so supermarkets should be moving away from using soy in their supply chains altogether. There is a good business case to do so – the global price of GM and non-GM soy has been rising consistently and shows little sign of stabilising.
In order to tackle these problems, some supermarkets are toying with the idea of buying soy certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS). But the scheme’s fundamental flaws mean that GM soy that has indirectly caused deforestation could be labelled ‘responsible’, something many consumers will find hard to swallow.

Soy’s displacement effect is causing hunger and conflict among local people and forcing small-scale farmers and cattle ranchers into the forests. As long as the UK relies on massive quantities of imported soy to feed its livestock, instead of growing our own animal feed, we will continue to export the impacts of our food production.

UK supermarkets wield enormous power over global supply chains. They need to be working with suppliers to help them move away from both GM and non-GM soy and voice concerns on behalf of their consumers on plans to allow illegal GM crops into European animal feed.

Ask the supermarkets to get rid of GM animal feed.

Escape from Clone Town

Paul Squires from the New Economics Foundation (nef) challenges us to re-imagine the high street.

In 2007 there were approximately 200,000 retail businesses operating in the UK, with a relatively small number of multiple retailers taking almost 80 per cent of total sales. On our local high streets they have proven to be fair weather friends and as sales figures collapsed, so did their shop numbers:
“We’ve got 25 underperforming Simply food stores… which are simply too small for us to be able to deal with in a profitable way and we’ve had to take some harsh action on that today.” Sir Stuart Rose, Chief Executive, Marks & Spencer, 7 January 2009.

The creeping dominance of supermarkets

In addition to the pressures of the recession, research by Stirling University(1) has again highlighted the impact of supermarket development on the high street, noting that high street diversity is diminishing as a result of supermarket developments.

During the period 2007-2009 larger grocers and their ‘local’ styled outlets have expanded across high streets at the expense of 914 branches of smaller shop multiples in the sectors of confectionery/tobacco/newsagents, off-licences, tea/coffee and bakers. Non-food ranges are also firmly in the sights of the major grocers: between 2003 and 2009 the large grocers’ share of non-food sales grew from 8.4 per cent to 13.5 per cent. As a total across the UK the number of chemist outlets grew by nearly 20 per cent, however this figure masks the fact that almost half of this expansion was due to the opening of in-store units by the largest four grocers (Tesco, Morrisons, ASDA, Sainsbury’s). Books and clothing are also areas where major retailers have expanded their product range and this added pressure, combined with increased internet shopping, has contributed to a net loss of 189 bookshops.

A typical supermarket contains no fewer than 30,000 items. About half of those items are produced by 10 multinational food and beverage companies. Roughly 140 people – 117 men and 21 women – form the boards of directors of those 10 companies. So much for diversity, when so few people control so much of what we eat and drink, and offer us the same products under different brands.

Nine meals from anarchy

The protestors’ blockade of fuel refineries and distribution depots which brought the country to a near standstill in 2000 revealed just how vulnerable reliance on a few very large chain retailers has left our local economies and communities. The fragile foundation of our over-reliance on oil and highly centralised distribution systems lay starkly exposed. Another three days of protests, supermarket bosses claimed, would have left their shelves empty. We were, in effect, only nine meals from anarchy.

Reducing our environmental impact

The ecological footprint (the number of hectares required to provide each of us with food, clothing and other resources) of the average UK resident is 5.3 global hectares (Gha).(2) Or put another way, the number of planets needed to sustain the whole world at the average UK level of consumption would be 3.1 planets. This compares with the average figures for the US of 9.5 Gha (5 planets), Germany 4.2 Gha (2.2 planets), China 2.1 Gha (1.2 planets), and with India and most African countries at 1.0 Gha or less (0.5 planets or less).

In response to the challenge of climate change, the UK Government has set a carbon reduction target of 34 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, increasing to an 80 per cent reduction by 2050. The CO2 emissions (including embodied CO2) of the average UK resident is 12.08 tonnes.(3) To achieve our carbon reduction targets this has to be reduced to four tonnes per annum.

To achieve these levels of reduction will require us to re-engineer our economic system, not only at the global and national level, but most importantly at the levels most immediately felt by individuals, families and communities through the environment on their doorsteps, the goods and services that they produce and consume, and the sense of well-being experienced.

Redesigning our high streets to support a low carbon-future means ultimately displacing retail chains (as large users of carbon) and replacing them with locally-embedded alternatives on our high streets, with people using their local high streets more. Supporting the development of resilience characteristics will mean local people taking an active lead, in partnership with public and private agencies, in re-designing their high streets to be more sustainable and reflective of their local needs.

The high street is so familiar that at times it can be difficult to imagine what an alternative model of a high street could look like. To help communities look at their high streets in a different way, we asked a number of community groups to use the ‘Five-ways to Well-being’ as design criteria for re-developing their high street, and build a physical model of what that looks like (using easily found objects in the local area). In identifying possible ideas for action, participants are asked to consider how those ideas help us to live within our environmental limits.
1. Connect… Finding time and the opportunity to connect with people around you.
2. Be Active… Physical activity can be encouraged by creating the space for it. This does not mean just sports facilities, but also green space to walk in, community allotments, and cycling pathways.
3. Keep learning…We can keep learning by promoting local history, opening space for public art, and learning new skills.
4. Take notice…Unusual features will also make people stop and look, be curious.
5. Give... Finding opportunities for people to share, exchange and help one another.

Initial pilots of design workshops based on the Five-ways to Well-being have demonstrated that activities which can emerge from this process are many and varied, from locally owned power generation, repair and recycling, reducing car travel, to local food sourcing, art and entertainment and supporting new local enterprise and retailing opportunities.(4)

The bigger picture – no blue-print

There is no blue-print which guarantees the delivery of a low carbon future which supports high levels of well-being for all. nef’s experience of delivering action research projects to support communities to understand their local economies, and identify new opportunities for local enterprise has shown that initially people feel unable to affect change in their local economy – the economy is just something that happens to you. And the sheer scale of the climate change challenge can have the effect of multiplying this feeling until people feel powerless to change anything.

At nef we believe much can be done to create the policy environment and support for local action which will move us towards a low carbon future through experimenting locally, being bold with our vision for transformation, and building on the assets that already exist within the local area – local people’s attitudes, skills and knowledge, physical, financial and natural resources.

Our experience of working on local economic development in the UK and internationally has demonstrated that supporting communities to explore practical ways they can affect change can be addressed by firstly presenting the issue in an understandable and engaging format, which then supports the identification of actions individuals and groups are passionate about taking forward.

With a little imagination our high streets could become places where we go to actively engage with other people in our communities; places where shopping is just one small part of a rich mix of activities including working, sharing, exchanging, playing and learning new skills. As the hub of our communities, the high street could become the place where we begin to build a more sustainable world.

To re-imagine your own high street visit www.reimagineyourhighstreet.org.
nef’s report ‘Reimagining the high street’ is available for free download or call 0207 820 6300.

References 1 Sterling University (2010) Retail Diversity Association of Convenience Stores 2 The ecological footprint measures how much biologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the renewable resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates 3 www.resource-accounting.org.uk. 4 Initial pilots have been help as part of a nef event the Bigger Picture held in October 2009, in Dewsbury as part of a master planning process, and with Transition Town Tooting.

The Independent Model

This is not a supermarket

Manchester’s Unicorn Grocery, a workers’ co-op, is one of the UK’s largest independent wholefood shops, and was named Radio 4’s ‘Best Local Food Retailer’ in 2008. Co-op member Debbie Clarke tells us how it offers an alternative model to the supermarkets.

Back in the early 90s, Unicorn’s founders felt frustrated at their lack of shopping options and aimed to create the kind of place where they wanted to shop. And so Unicorn was born. While the shop provides a similar range of products to a supermarket and prices competitively with them, the way Unicorn does business is very different. The public face of the supermarkets hides the true costs of food and trade. They are being paid for neither by the consumer nor the retailer. Suppliers, taxpayers and government are subsidising supermarket practices through things like tax credits to low-paid workers.

Unicorn is guided by a set of founding principles that attempt to make the way we trade less exploitative and more sustainable. The basic remit is affordable, wholesome food with a focus on organic, fairtrade, local and ethical sourcing. It’s what we strive for – but we don’t claim to be perfect. We aim to appeal to the mass market as an alternative to the supermarket, and this means we are constantly balancing ethics with affordability. Our products reflect this, so range from things that may not differ much from those in your cornershop, to more radical lines like Zapatista coffee from autonomous Mexican communities or Adavasi tea traded using a ‘Fairtrade Plus’ model. Much of our fruit and veg is still shipped from abroad out of season because it’s what people want. But all our fruit and veg, plus alcohol and bread – totalling about 50% of sales – is organic.

All our UK fruit and veg comes directly from the farm. Buying direct from suppliers means we are able to develop honest and long-term relationships, and our trading terms are much fairer than the supermarkets’.

Chris Hewitt is a local veg supplier to Unicorn. For ten years he was part of a growers’ co-op supplying three of the biggest supermarkets. According to Chris, at the start of the year the supermarkets would produce reports indicating their expected sales of fresh produce which they in turn expected the growers to provide. The growers would sow crops accordingly. But in the 10 or so years that Chris supplied them the supermarkets never once hit these sales, leaving the growers to pick up the difference. Prices were driven consistently down despite the growers’ costs increasing. Purchasing practices made it very clear that if the growers didn’t supply for the prices demanded, the supermarkets would simply go somewhere else. “They were aggressive and bullish,” Chris says, “It’s a hard enough job as it is without knowing you’re not getting a fair return for it. Trading with companies like Unicorn, we’re now receiving a fairer price for our crops, rather than the rock-bottom price that the supermarkets were paying”.

Making good food accessible to a mass market involves a balance that’s hard to get right. We don’t claim to be perfect. But as a co-operative, we’re guided by principles that we all believe in.

We probably don’t get it right all the time. But as a co-operative, we’re guided by principles that we all believe in. And unlike the supermarkets we are not driven by the need to maximise profits.

Staying competitive on price has become increasingly challenging, though still possible. The supermarkets’ ‘price wars’ have driven the cost of food down to their lowest ever levels. But we believe we’ll only get more relevant in the future, as the small independent sector, and particularly Unicorn, are well placed to adapt in a post-oil world. Whilst the supermarkets continue to adhere to a central distribution hub model, we stay affordable by buying direct from suppliers wherever possible. And we’re increasing local supply year on year to reduce the distance between field and fork, including from our own land just 14 miles away, purchased in 2008. We continue to support growers financially when they need it, the nearest of which is just two miles away (Glebelands City Growers, a co-operatively run market garden). Five or six others supply us from within 20-30 miles.

We think there’s room for a Unicorn-type store in every city, and perhaps more besides And certainly a few less supermarkets.

www.unicorn-grocery.co.uk.

Company profiles

The Big Seven

ASDA, owned by Wal-Mart, bought the UK arm of Netto Foodstores in 2010. The deal marks ASDA’s first big expansion into local convenience stores. Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retail group. With 2.1m employees, and a turnover of £225bn, it could be a small, and very rich country – one where the ruling family own 45% and the vast majority are on very low wages. It has the rare distinction of scoring zero.

The Co-operative Group, is the world’s largest co-operative society as well as the UK’s biggest farmer and, since its acquisition of Somerfield, the fifth-largest grocery retailer. The Group is unique amongst retailers in that it has banking and insurance operations. It therefore picks up a half mark in Armaments for a stake in companies such as BAE Systems Plc and Lockheed Martin. It does however receive a positive mark for its mutual – rather than profit-making – corporate structure. The Political Activities mark is for donations to the Co-operative Party – affiliated to the Labour Party. Human Rights, Habitats & Resources and Climate Change marks are due to palm oil, see below, while Pollution & Toxics is due to sale of products containing parabens.

M&S has a policy positive on regulating and reducing pesticides in its supply chain, and its Pollution & Toxics mark is for products containing parabens and a pollution incident in its supply chain. Its Habitats & Resources mark relates to allegations over unsustainable use of water supplies by Kenyan flower producers that supply the supermarket sector. Operations in 9 countries, considered by Ethical Cosumer to be oppressive regimes, accounts for the Human Rights mark. The ‘Boycott the 35’ group is calling for boycotts against the 35 companies, including M&S publicly supporting UK public spending.

Morrisons performs poorly on policies. No GM policy; no policy on animal tested products; no policy on products from illegal Israeli settlements; no pesticides policy. The company does earn middle rating in the important Supply Chain Policy category, as well as Environmental Reporting, and does have some positive stocking policies, including on sustainable seafood.

Sainsbury’s, the UK’s third biggest supermarket, with a turnover of £20bn, is hard on the heels of M&S and the Co-op on our combined score, gaining a better rating than in our usual ethiscore table opposite. The company was reported to have lobbied against the proposal for an independent supermarket ombudsman, which earns it a Political Activities mark. And it was one of the UK’s major supermarkets stocking produce from the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. On a more positive note the company recently unveiled a major zero-waste initiative designed to ensure that all it’s food waste was converted into biofuel.

Tesco is the world’s fourth-largest grocery retailer, with a turnover of nearly £57bn. Tesco runs about 4,800 stores in the UK (where it is the biggest), as well as a dozen other countries. The company has scored poorly on both rating systems in this report. Its Boycott mark relates to sale of live turtles in its Chinese stores. The boycott is called by Care for The Wild International.

Third place supermarket Waitrose was a Best Buy in our 2009 report. However, despite it’s many positive policies, the new combined rating system used in this report has opened up a distinct gap between Best Buys Co-op and M&S and the next rank. Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Group, an employee partnership, and gains a positive mark under ‘Company Ethos’ for this mutual form of organisation. Waitrose and M&S are the only companies in this report to get best rating for palm oil policy.

The Rest

ALDI (short for “Albrecht Discounts”) buys cheap land mostly on city outskirts, builds cheap warehouses, employs a tiny staff, and carries mostly private-label items. It runs more than 9,400 stores worldwide with two thirds of sales coming from Germany and offers deeply discounted prices on about 1,400 popular food items (a typical supermarket has 30,000).
A 2009 Clean Clothes Campaign Report(1) stated that an ALDI clothes supplier in Bangladesh had a history of trade union repression. One male worker had allegedly been fired for association with a trade union, while two female workers were not only sacked, but forced to leave the neighbourhood for attempting to organise workers.

Founded in 1847, Booths is Britain’s oldest family-owned and run grocery business. Booths sells groceries and fresh produce from locations across Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cumbria. 80% of its fresh meat is locally sourced. Of the smaller supermarkets, it is also particularly strong on Environmental Reporting, with its 2010 report providing a comprehensive breakdown of the company’s carbon footprint, not just of its own operations but also looking at food supply chain impacts, which make up 67% of Booth’s carbon footprint. The report includes a list of actions to take which will reduce Booth’s carbon footprint by 5% a year.

Best rating in Environmental Reporting also goes to Ireland’s largest food and grocery distributor Musgrave Group, owners of the Budgens and Londis brands. Musgrave’s commitments include a 5% annual reduction in oil, gas and electricity use over the period 2008-12. Budgens is the only convenience store to say that it stocked Fairtrade and organic products.

The Costcutter Supermarkets Group is a Yorkshire-based, franchise operation, 51% owned by the Bibby Line Group, a group of global companies with varied interests including providing offshore services to the oil and gas industry, retailing and - strangely perhaps - Woodland Burial Parks.

Farmfoods is a Glasgow-based frozen foods retailer. It does not appear to address its environmental impacts despite the fact that it has a large climate impact through its use of freezers.

The Icelandic Government took control of Iceland Foods Ltd after the collapse of Baugur Group in 2009. It came second from bottom of the Marine Conservation Society’s supermarkets’ sustainable seafood league table in 2009.

Lidl is one of the leading discount store operators in Europe, with more than 9,300 stores, owned by billionaire founder Dieter Schwarz and family. Two Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) reports in recent years criticised working conditions at its clothing suppliers in Bangladesh, India and Korea. Workers reported being threatened with losing their jobs if they formed a trade union. CCC also found frequent examples of gender discrimination, with women paid less than men, having less opportunity for promotion and of beatings and verbal insults, some of them sexual in nature.(2)

Premier is the third largest symbol group in the UK, with over 2,500 stores nationwide. Operated by Booker, all Premier stores are independently owned by retailers.

SPAR is now the world’s largest international food retail chain, with 13,600 stores in 33 countries. It is also the UK’s leading convenience store group, with a turnover in excess of £2.7billion.

Helping consumers to make sustainable choices

The 2009 report, ‘Green to the Core’ published by Consumer Focus (soon to be a victim of the cuts), rated the UK’s top nine supermarkets on how well they inform consumers about sustainability issues and help them to make more sustainable choices, both through provision of products and information. The nine were ranked A to D:

A: M&S, Sainsbury's
B: Waitrose
C: The Co-op, Morrisons, Tesco
D: ASDA, ALDI, Lidl

Palm oil

Regular readers will know we have been closely tracking developments around palm oil, the stuff in one in ten supermarket products, that’s destroying rainforests, their people, wildlife, and the climate (see features in EC112 and EC124). We’ve previously reported on WWF’s palm oil scorecard, which rated companies on their approach. With a year to go before WWF update the scorecard we’ve found out if and where there’s progress in the sector.

Only two, Waitrose and M&S, get our best rating for their palm oil policy.

Waitrose’s Head of Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing, Quentin Clark, told us: “We have committed to using only Certified Sustainable Palm Oil in our own label products by the end of 2012 and we are making good progress in achieving this target. As an interim measure we have purchased ‘GreenPalm’ certificates for those products which are still undergoing a conversion to sustainable palm oil.”

GreenPalm is a certificate trading program which is designed to tackle the environmental and social problems created by the production of palm oil.
M&S has purchased GreenPalm Certificates to cover all of the palm oil used in M&S products. “Our priority is to avoid using palm oil unless it is absolutely necessary for the quality of a product,” M&S told us, “And to use alternatives to palm oil wherever possible. By 2015, we aim to use only 100% fully traceable, certified sustainable palm oil.”

ASDA, Co-op, Morrisons and Tesco have said they will source sustainable palm oil by 2015, Sainsbury’s will do the same by the end of 2014 – which could amount to the same thing. They all receive half marks in the Climate Change, Habitats & Resources and Human Rights categories because the negative effects of palm oil production have been apparent for at least five years. This distant future commitment is therefore not good enough.

Paul Monaghan, the Co-op’s Head of Social Goals and Sustainability, told us that: “In the WWF scorecard we were marked down for not having a time-bound public commitment, and for not having any certified palm oil in products. Both of these issues have been addressed. We currently have around 280 (46%) Co-operative brand products that use palm oil certified as sustainable.”

It’s well worth remembering palm oil policy commitments only apply to own brand products so in terms of overall impact, the policies of M&S (with all but a handful of own brands) are more significant than the others.

A Supermarket Animal Welfare A-Z

Tim Hunt is disappointed to discover xantis yak meat is unavailable in UK supermarkets.

Abattoirs
Animal Aid is demanding that supermarkets only buy meat from animals killed in abattoirs fitted with CCTV cameras. Recently undercover filming by the organisation found “shocking cruelty and illegality” at six out of seven randomly chosen slaughterhouses where they filmed.

Boycotts
Tesco is currently under a boycott call from Care for the Wild International for selling live turtles in their Chinese stores.

Chicken
A typical supermarket chicken (intensively reared) today contains proportionally 2.7 times as much fat as in 1970. They spend much of their time lying down and many of them suffer from lameness. The added weight also puts a strain on their hearts and lungs. In the UK alone more than 15 million chickens die in their sheds from heart failure each year. Across the EU this figure could be more than 100 million, according to Compassion in World Farming.

Docking
88% or more of the pig meat sold by all of the supermarkets still comes from pigs that have been tail-docked. This practice has been outlawed in the UK but not in other countries. However, research from Compassion in World Farming in 2007 showed that the practice was also still prevalent in the UK.

Eggs
Eggs from battery farmed chickens are becoming a thing of the past in supermarkets. Sainsbury’s, M&S, Waitrose, The Co-operative and Morrisons (under its own label) have switched to cage-free eggs.

Freedom Food
The RSPCA revealed the market on Freedom Food indoor reared chicken is far outstripping ‘standard’ chickens, with a staggering £55.2m increase in consumer spending on Freedom Food labelled chicken (to £71.6m) since March 2009. This compares to a drop of more than £26m for ‘standard’ chicken.

Good Food Shopping Guide from Compassion in World Farming

Halal
An investigation by the Mail on Sunday found Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Somerfield, the Co-op, Waitrose and M&S all stock halal meat. Animal Aid responded by saying: “It is right to be outraged at this needless suffering of animals. But it is wrong to think that stunning animals before their throats are cut renders the whole process humane.” The Farm Animal Welfare Council have said the halal method of slaughter should be banned immediately.

James Paice
The Tory Agriculture minister, James Paice, who part-owns a farm in Cambridgeshire, recently delayed a number of animal welfare reforms including delaying by five years a ban on beak mutilations of laying hens due to come into force in January. The RSPCA said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision, describing beak trimming as “an insult to hens’ welfare”.

Killing prosecutions
The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has stopped a series of prosecutions of abattoir operators based on secret footage which caught slaughterhouse workers kicking cattle, pigs and sheep. Tim Smith, head of the Food Standards Agency, which enforces slaughterhouse standards, said of the images: “The cruelty on show is the worst I have seen.” Defra said the prosecutions would have failed because the footage had been obtained by trespass. Animal Aid, which shot the film, described the decision as “political”.

Labelling
The UK’s main supermarkets recently signed up to ‘country of origin’ labelling for meat, processed meat and dairy products. This will be useful to those interested in keeping down their food miles as well as those interested in animal welfare standards. So far ASDA, the Co-operative Group, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose have signed up to the new voluntary code.

Marine Conservation Society ratings
In 2009 MCS looked into the sustainability of seafood available in the UK’s major supermarkets. Supermarkets sell nearly nine tenths of all seafood in the UK and MCS believe that they “have a key role to play in helping fisheries become more sustainable.”
MCS’s Supermarket Survey is designed to show who is leading the way in tackling overfishing. They scored the supermarkets in eight different categories including the seafood they sell, how it is labelled and how they are working with fishermen and fish-farmers.

Naturewatch’s ‘Compassionate Shopping Guide’
The Guide puts the spotlight on the animal testing of consumer products, as well as their environmental impacts. The table below shows which supermarket own-brand products are cruelty-free.

To order copies of the Compassionate Shopping Guide go to www.naturewatch.org/shoppingguide/csg.asp or call 01242 252871.

Public vote Co-op nation’s favourite
The Co-op won the RSPCA People’s Choice Award taking 59% of the vote in recognition its animal welfare standards.

Quarter
At least one quarter of meat on sale in the UK comes from farms that do not have to meet national standards for animal welfare. The UK has relatively high standards of animal welfare compared with the rest of the world. However, there are no restrictions on importing meat from countries that do not impose such standards, where costs are often lower.

Reindeer
Animal rights groups have been outraged that German discount chain Lidl is selling frozen Siberian reindeer leg steaks in the run-up to Christmas. Eating Rudolf doesn’t feel like festive spirit.

Squirrel
Squirrel is being sold by a Budgens store in London. The animal welfare group Viva accused Budgens of profiting from a “wildlife massacre”.

Tesco
Following a Chicken Out! poll, 76% per cent of the almost 10,000 votes found Tesco to have the most misleading chicken label out of five leading UK supermarkets. See www.chickenout.tv for more on the campaign.

Unsustainable
“Products we buy in supermarkets account for 97% of our water footprint,” according to Professor Arjen Hoekstra. The water footprint of animal products from factory farms can be huge. Professor Hoekstra has found that 15,500 litres of water can be required to produce just one kilo of beef. See also page 33.

Vegetarians
22% of vegetarians are not satisfied with the choice of vegetarian options available to them in their supermarket, according to a survey for National Vegetarian Week.

Waitrose
Compassion in World Farming has crowned Waitrose the ‘Most Compassionate UK Supermarket’ for 2010. They say that the supermarket has constantly pushed farm animal welfare boundaries. Their management systems, the range and depth of information they record about their farm suppliers and the animals on them is very comprehensive, and they have their own standards (which are above and beyond other third party standards) independently audited.

Xmas Turkey
Ten million turkeys are sold in the UK each year, and of these, 90% are reared intensively, spending their short 15 week lives in windowless, crowded, barren sheds. If you want to be sure that yours has been fed a healthy diet, had access to the outdoors and is not from a factory farm, then look out for the Soil Association logo, as no system of farming has higher levels of animal welfare standards.

Zebra
Waitrose started selling zebra during the BSE crisis as an alternative to beef.

“The best thing anyone can do to save the largest amount of animals is to stop consuming products derived from animals; a vegetarian saves more than 100 animals a year from abuse.”