Mince pies

Find ethical mince pies

Readily availably in supermarkets from early autumn, the festive mince pie comes in many variations.

This guide looks at who makes organic, vegan, palm oil free mince pies, and tries to find fair trade mince pies.

It features UK supermarkets along with well-known brands like Mr Kipling and Greggs, plus smaller independent organisations like Abel & Cole and Riverford, and an ethical baker which makes mince pies for other companies. The large variation in scores highlights the massive difference between the smaller more ethical brands and large supermarkets for their mince pies. 

Although the supermarkets generally score poorly, there are differences between them, so if you do have a choice of supermarkets, read on to find which are better ethically and environmentally.

Note: Abel & Cole, Riverford and the supermarkets were updated in summer 2024 for the supermarkets guide. The other brands in this guide were rated in autumn 2025. 

Vegan mince pies

Mince pies have gone on a real journey when it comes to animal ingredients. They used to be made with actual meat (hence the name), but most swapped the meat for fruit in the late Victorian era (though they still generally contained suet which can be from animal or plant-based sources). 

Not to be left behind the times, many mince pies are now becoming vegan.

None of the brands in this guide are part of fully vegan companies, but the majority appeared to offer a vegan version, with the exception of Aldi, Booths, Daylesford, Iceland, Mr Kipling, and Roots & Wings.

Greggs was the only company where all its mince pies were vegan, but it does sell a lot of other meat and dairy products.

In fact, all the companies in this guide sell a significant amount of animal products, and most of them are supermarkets with huge ranges but without adequate welfare policies.

Riverford, Roots & Wings and Authentic Bread Company scored 70 for animal issues because all of their animal products were covered by policies which, to some extent, mitigated the suffering of the animals concerned. For these companies, it was because their entire range was certified organic, which includes standards for animal welfare. With Riverford this is true apart from the sale of some wild fish, which it said was line caught in small boats. 

Daylesford were largely organic but sold farmed salmon so only scored 50. Abel & Cole was also found to have mostly adequate policies but no policies could be found for its parent company, William Jackson Food Limited.

Are there palm oil free mince pies?

Palm oil is a problematic ingredient and we explore more about the impacts of palm oil in a separate article.

The good news is that there are plenty of palm oil free options available for mince pies. Our ‘Who Sells What’ table can help you find them. 

Our palm rating only applies to own-brand products, not the other products sold by these retailers. 

Supermarkets and larger companies often use palm oil as a replacement for butter, so if buying from such brands your choice is likely between vegan or palm oil free. There are mince pies which are both palm oil free and vegan, and these tend to be available from smaller brands, such as Riverford or Roots and Wings.

Riverford and Roots and Wings were both palm oil free companies. Authentic Bread Company also scored well as a small company with all of its palm oil certified as organic.

Most of the major supermarkets were now fully certified for their palm oil, and were working their way towards higher percentages of segregated palm oil. Segregation means that the actual palm oil contained in your product has come directly from a certified source. These companies scored 60 on the table. 

Booths had limited public information which prevented it scoring well and Aldi did not meet the requirement for over 50% certified segregated to be awarded higher marks.

Iceland famously was the first and only supermarket to go palm oil free a few years ago. However, in 2022 it announced that it had to temporarily start using some palm oil again due to the war in Ukraine, which has affected the supply of sunflower oil. Unfortunately, the company did not appear to have any palm oil sourcing policies in place, nor had it reported to the RSPO, although it was considered likely that it was using less palm oil than its peers due to the previous removal of it as an ingredient.

Organic mince pies

All the mince pies from Abel & Cole, Authentic Bread Company, Daylesford, Riverford, and Roots & Wings were organic. 

Last time Waitrose was the only supermarket brand to offer an organic mince pie but these did not appear to be on sale in 2025 and none of the other supermarkets appeared to offer an organic mince pie either.

What about fair trade mince pies?

While mince pies contain many ingredients that can (and should) be sourced fair trade, such as sugar, spices, and dried fruits, it doesn’t seem that there are any options for buying ready-made fair trade mince pies.

Who sells what?

The table below is a summary of all the options for mince pies at the time of conducting the research (November 2025).

We don't do a full update of all the companies in this guide each year, but all the companies in this guide have been rated in 2024 or 2025. The information in this 'Who Sells What?' table is up to date as of November 2025.

The ultimate ethical mince pie

Only Abel & Cole, Riverford and Authentic Bread Company offered the holy trinity of a mince pie that is palm oil free, vegan, and organic. (Authentic Bread Company make the mince pies for Abel & Cole and Riverford but to each brand’s recipe). 

Mince pies and packaging

We have often received requests from subscribers to rate companies on plastic and packaging, so this guide seemed a good opportunity to try this out. For larger companies, marks were awarded for:

• quantified dated targets to reduce plastic packaging
• reduce overall packaging
• increase recyclability of packaging, and
• increase the recycled content of packaging. 

Marks were also given when companies demonstrated that they had taken clear steps on these four aspects.

For small companies, we looked for aims and action on the same factors but did not require these to be as quantified as larger companies. Top marks would be given for companies with more radical approaches to packaging such as zero plastic or packaging free. Marks were deducted for third-party criticisms.

Riverford was the highest scorer in our packaging rating as it had a significant amount of plastic-free and reusable/returnable packaging as well as demonstrating it had reduced non-consumer packaging.

None of the major supermarkets scored that well despite being responsible for a huge quantity of packaging. Co-op was the highest of the bunch with a score of 50. 

Authentic Bread Company did not have enough information publicly available to score highly but may have been doing more in practice.

Agricultural practices

We looked at what actions companies are taking to reduce, or even reverse, the damage done to biodiversity and ecosystems by agriculture. We look at the use of organic farming as well as GMOs, pesticides, water and food waste and pollution. For supermarkets, this looks at their own-brand policies only.

Riverford and Daylesford scored full marks as they had multiple policies beyond their organic focus. Authentic Bread Company, Roots & Wings, and Abel & Cole also scored well. 

Tesco, Booths and Greggs were the lowest scorers. 

Tesco scored poorly partly due to receiving multiple criticisms from campaign groups relating to its agricultural supply chain. For example, it was reported that a report exposing pollution of the River Wye by intensive poultry farming was shelved by the WWF to “keep Tesco happy”. The charity was reported to have received more than £6 million in donations from Tesco and both organisations deny this was why the report was pulled. 

Booths did not publish much information on its agricultural supply chain which prevented it from scoring and Greggs’ did not demonstrate enough action on the range of issues the rating looks at. 

Workers' rights

We looked at what companies were doing to uphold the rights of workers in their supply chains. For example whether they had clear and comprehensive supplier codes of conducts and also whether they acknowledged the impact their purchasing practices could have on a supplier's ability to uphold that code.

Small and medium-sized companies were not expected to have as robust policies as larger companies. Abel & Cole, Authentic Bread Company, Riverford and Roots and Wings all scored 60 or above. 

Our research showed that even supermarkets with thorough workers’ rights policies face regular criticism from the media and campaign groups, suggesting that exploitation is regularly occurring in their supply chains.

Three companies, Asda, Greggs and Iceland, scored 0 marks (out of 100) in the workers category.

Tesco was accused of major workers’ rights abuse in 2022 by supply chain workers in Thailand who had been working 99-hour weeks and sleeping on concrete floors.

Of the larger companies, Premier Foods (Mr Kipling), Sainsbury’s and Waitrose scored the highest but still only received a score of 50. 

We don't do a full update of all the companies in this guide each year (but they have all been rated in 2024 or 2025) but the information in this 'Who Does What' table is up to date as of November 2025.

This is a web-only guide and did not appear in a 2025 magazine.