Deceptive Food Labels

As I posted previously, the supermarket Tesco, received some criticism via a television documentary about the poor standards welfare standards of the poultry it sells. Because of my village location, I have very little choice about which supermarkets I shop at, thus I do used Tesco myself.

When I went into the store today I noticed their new public relations campaign called nurture. This is an attempt to add spin to their food sales, claiming to support animal welfare and support British farmers. While this campaign may fool some people, as the retailer has not changed its standards at all, the majority of customers will see it for what it is, that of a PR stunt.

Then whilst going around the store, I started looking carefully at the labels on the meat. Partly this was because I was interesting in purchasing some for a dish that I was going to cook. Because I had learnt how to spot the meat that is produced overseas and legally sold as British produce, I looked carefully beyond the labels that said it was British. The difficulty that the public have is that these packs carry a union flag (the correct name for the British Flag, the Union Jack is only its name when flown from a Royal Navy ship) and look as though they are British produce. This deception is the result of a loophole in the law that was intended to enable manufacturers to label their product with the country of origin. Meat packers discovered that by slaughtering livestock and brought in from overseas, and then cut in the carcase up there would then be classed as produced in a country where this slaughtering took place.

So while the supermarkets are not to blame for this practice, the supermarkets take full advantage of it. Nor is Tesco the only retailer to do this, all of them do. If this meat was marked by the country that the animal was raised in than I am sure that the majority of the public The Consumer would reject buying these products, as the British consumer knows that in the UK we have higher welfare standards than occur on continental Europe. In fact some of the pork meat sold here as British is raised in a way that is illegal for British farmers.

This deception also means that consumers do not know that they have potentially contaminated meat. When there was a scare in the Irish pork, I myself was fooled into believing that the metre I had in my freezer was a safe. It was only later that I discovered that the British labelled Pork had originated in the Irish Republic. While the danger in that instance was very small, only by honest labelling can the Consumer be sure that their food is safe.

What always amazes me about these practices is that the owners of the businesses failed to think the consequences of this deception. All it will take is something beyond the control of the supermarkets, or the meat processing companies, which causes a major food scare. Where the supermarket is forced to own up to this deception and the public, their customers will leave them in droves. No matter how good the PR machine is within the business, any business had been forced to own up to deception, will be damaged. Therefore I would have thought it best business practice not to deceive the consumer, the customer in the first place.

In the end I decided not to buy any meat there and will support my local butcher instead where for the same price Tesco was charging for Stewing Steak, I will get a third more and better quality too.