And Then There Was One...

As I said a few days ago, it’s nice to be current.  However sometimes you can be too damn current for your own good.  I think perhaps as a blogger I do better by waiting for the dust to settle and taking a more reflective look at events.  Yesterday provided just such a case in point.

In my latest blog I berated the supermarket giant Tesco for abandoning its long standing commitment to exclude chicken and egg products reared with GM soya.  I compared the company unfavourably with some of their competitors and reminded consumers that they do have a choice in where they shop.  The electrons were barely dry on the server before arch rivals Sainsbury’s and also Marks & Spencer and the Co-Op all announced that they would  be following Tesco’s lead and dropping that particular pledge.

Four major food retailers making almost identical policy statements on the same day. A coincidence?  You decide.  I am not a lawyer but don’t the 1998 Competition Act, and Articles 81 and 82 of the EC treaty have something or other to say about anti-competitive agreements between businesses?

ASDA, part of the gargantuan Walmart group, gave up on non-GM feed in 2010 and Morrison’s followed suit in 2012.

Fortunately you do still have a choice.  Waitrose is now the only (almost) national supermarket chain still committed to keeping GM-free eggs.  As I reported yesterday, Waitrose is also taking an extremely proactive approach to the pressing issue of neonic pesticides and bee mortality.  All this starts to chime positively with other snippets that I have picked up along the way.

A Suffolk pig farmer I know produces free range British pork exclusively for Waitrose.  He says the retailer takes the toughest possible stance on both animal welfare and on wider issues of environmental management.  Waitrose inspectors, he told me, regularly visit his property to measure field margins and map biodiversity in his hedgerows.

Waitrose has also been at the forefront of ensuring that all wet fish and fish products sold in their stores are sourced from sustainable fisheries.  Not only that, but they take pains to ensure that all fish can be securely traced from catch to counter, and they’ve done that for years, long before recent MSC concerns surfaced about accreditation.

Waitrose has a reputation for being upmarket and a bit expensive, but according to the company’s website their 1,000 basic branded grocery products are the same price as Tesco’s.  The only thing that’s exclusive about Waitrose is their commitment to environmental issues.

It’s not my place as a blogger to promote any particular retailer, but when one company does stand out from the pack they deserve to be recognized.  Surely it cannot be a coincidence that, as a part of the John Lewis Partnership, Waitrose is not your normal shareholder driven company.  This retailer is for me the truly acceptable face of capitalism.

In the interests of fairness I should point out that most, if not all, of the supermarkets named continue to sell ‘organic’ chicken and eggs, which do adhere to the Soil Association’s definition and therefore remain GM free.

Aisles of Plenty

No subject may be counted upon to get people worked up into a good righteous lather more than supermarkets.  Supermarkets have transformed our lives in the past forty years like few other modern institutions.  But to many people they are the epitome of evil.  Campaigners the length and breadth of the country fight to keep these commercial behemoths out of their communities.  They are charged with causing or enabling every kind of social and environmental problem we face.

Supermarkets, it is claimed, destroy our towns by using their scale to drive small businesses out of the market, leading to decimated high streets which then fill up with estate agents, betting shops and charity shops.  They damage our rural environment by using their buying power to squeeze producers to the point that they have to focus entirely on price without regard to the damage such practices may have on ecology. They add food miles to our daily grocery basket. They create an economic model where it profits unscrupulous producers to substitute horsemeat for the er… ‘prime beef’ people thought went in to their economy burgers. They manipulate world prices and bully third world countries.  They force shop workers to work nights and on weekends, breaking down age old religious and social traditions such as the day of rest.  They promote cheap alcohol sales which cause social problems, particularly among the young, and so on and on.

All of these claims have more than a grain of truth behind them, but despite the fact that nobody admits to liking them, we all shop in them.  Almost every family in Britain must hold a loyalty card for one or more of the big four chains.  (Big 4?  There’s another problem, they eliminate competition from the market!)

Of course they wouldn’t be popular if they weren’t doing something right.  There are flip sides to most of these arguments. Supermarkets have largely been responsible for the era of low food prices enjoyed by consumers for decades.  Like their advertisements say, they do scour the world for interesting and unusual products.  This alone has driven the food revolution in modern Britain transforming our national cuisine from a standing joke to a showcase of the world’s finest fare.  And many hard pressed consumers are glad to be able to do their shopping at night or on Sundays.  For one thing, I know from my own experience, it allows fathers to play a more complete part in family life.

The point is that supermarkets by themselves are neither good nor bad.  They do, as a function of their size, wield great power.  That power can be used for good or for ill, as I alluded to some weeks ago at the height of the horse meat scandal.

Today, my eye was caught by two stories which illustrate this point exactly.

First Tesco has announced that they will drop an eleven year old restriction on chickens and eggs from birds fed on GM soya.  They claim that it is simply becoming too hard to source non-GM chicken feed.  Equally significantly, they do not plan to label chickens or eggs as GM products.  The Soil Association dispute Tesco’s arguments about sourcing feed and say in effect that the supermarket is being pressured by big, multinational, industrial farm corporations.

I have avoided blogging about genetic modification because it’s a huge and complicated subject.  Frankly I don’t think we yet know all the facts.  Personally I am not particularly worried about eating GM produce, but I am concerned about the possible effects on wildlife and natural flora, and I don’t like the idea of farmers being locked in to particular agrochemicals suppliers.  Stories of Frankenstein foods don’t help, but then neither do real world examples of Monsanto trying to patent common fruit and vegetables.

Faced with such uncertainty my natural response is to rely upon the precautionary principle and do nothing irrevocable. GM foods exist.  Let them be properly labeled and allow the consumer to decide.  All the evidence shows that the public is not happy about eating GM produce.  By their actions Tesco is taking the decision and the choice away from the consumer.

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On a more positive note, Waitrose has today instituted a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides because of concerns over the harm done to bees, butterflies and other pollinators.  I blogged about these systemic insecticides three weeks ago, and how Germany and the UK, homes respectively to the two biggest manufacturers, Bayer and Syngenta, blocked EU wide restrictions on their use.

Under Waitrose’s Seven Point Plan for Pollinators, suppliers of fruit, vegetables, flowers and commodity crops such as oilseed rape have until the end of next year to stop using the three most popular neonicotinoids: imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

In parallel with this ban, the supermarket will fund a three year research programme at the University of Exeter to establish the facts about these chemicals, which are naturally disputed by the manufacturers.

Perhaps like me you feel it should have been the chemicals companies themselves or even DEFRA which sponsored this research, but nevertheless I welcome Waitrose‘s unilateral action.

Examples such as these demonstrate how supermarkets can use their power in the interest of the consumers or against them in the narrow pursuit of profit at all costs.  They also remind us that there is always a choice, even if we have to drive a little further to get it.

* Morrisons and Asda had both previously dropped their own bans on GM feed.  Marks & Spencer, The Co-Op and Sainsbury’s  all followed Tesco's lead within hours of my writing this blog.

Crying fowl.

As the bells chimed midnight on December 31^st the law changed right across the EU.  With the adoption of European Union Council Directive 1999/74/EC conventional battery cages for chickens are now banned from the EU and it is illegal to sell battery eggs.

It is still legal to keep hens in cages, but from now on they have to be the new so called Enriched or Colony Cages.  These allow the birds more space and head room and also provide features such as a nesting area, a scratching area and perches for roosting to enrich their lives.

Replacing every battery cage in Europe has been a big project.  Farmers have had 12 years notice in order to comply and in the UK alone the industry calculates that egg producers have spent £400m on converting cages. Nevertheless as the deadline drew near it became clear that many countries would miss the target.  In fact only 13 out of 27 countries were fully compliant by January 1^st.  Across the whole of Europe it seems about 14% of producers have failed to comply with the regulations accounting for some 46 million chickens. In the worst lagging countries, Belgium and Italy, fully one third of hens are still in battery cages.

Understandably the British producers, led by the British Egg Industry Council were increasingly concerned about the apparent unfairness of this situation.  Even though the UK is about 85% self sufficient in eggs, BEIC has called for a ban on imports and in fact began legal proceedings against the British government to force it to take action against other countries in the European institutions.  Compliant producers, they argue, have absorbed huge costs already and there is an increased cost of production associated with the enriched cages.  Foreign farmers who have broken the law, they argue, should not be able to benefit by undercutting British producers.

Their righteous indignation took something of a knock when it emerged last week that the UK was among the delinquents.   According to DEFRA, 30 British farms have failed to meet the deadline.  BEIC estimate 150,000 birds may be affected, DEFRA say 1% of the UK flock, which would be more like 350,000.  Either way, the government says they must either comply or cease production by the end of January and the European Commission says 1% or 30% it’s all the same, the UK will be among the fourteen countries receiving letters outlining likely remedial procedures later this month.

I think British indignation is misplaced.  Now I accept that animal welfare is generally better in the UK than many other parts of Europe and British farmers are as good as anyone at implementing EU regulations.  I also accept that the Enriched cages are an improvement on the traditional battery cage.

The old cages had a minimum statutory height of 40cm.  Birds typically stood on a wire floor about 5 to 10 in a cage, each with a minimum 500 cm² space, about the size of a sheet of A4 paper.  They didn’t have enough room to turn around or to stretch their wings properly.  They lived their whole life indoors in artificially regulated light to maximise laying, in sheds which reeked of ammonia from piled up excrement.  The cages were associated with increased incidence of ‘feather pecking’ where birds literally peck each other to death, and the farmers’ response ‘beak trimming’ where young birds actually have their beaks cut off to prevent pecking.  Cages cause stress, disease, high mortality rates and cannibalism.  Surely anything has to be better than that.

The Enriched cages, great name by the way, increase the headroom to 50 cm.  Each cage can now accommodate 60 to 80 chickens, that’s where the word Colony comes from, with each bird allotted an extra 250 cm², one and a half A4 sheets!  The birds usually stand on Astroturf, not wire, and by having specified laying, perching and scratching places the guano problem is dealt with more effectively.  It’s still not exactly the Hilton is it?

Does any of this matter? I mean these are the creatures who famously continue to run around even if you cut their heads off.  How great exactly is their capacity for suffering?

Well yes it does matter, I am not a vegetarian but I respect the animals that feed me.  I believe any amount of needless suffering is too much.  I also do not want my food to be associated with stinking, torture chambers.  I believe that healthy food comes from healthy animals.  Remember this is the system that has given us eggs containing listeria and salmonella.

Thankfully I am not alone.  About 50% of the shell eggs sold in the UK nowadays are ‘free-range’, where chickens actually get the chance to wander outdoors and walk around in the fresh air.  If you consider that commercial purchasers, hotels, schools, hospitals etc. are more likely to buy on price and therefore to buy cage eggs, I would argue that the majority of eggs bought directly by the public are free-range.

Free-range eggs do cost more.  Producers estimate it costs about 22p to make a free-range egg compared with 11p for a battery egg.  The classic argument is choice; let the consumer decide how much animal welfare they want to pay for.  Well I think that the public has chosen.  It is notoriously hard to influence indirect purchases.  Who knows what kind of eggs go in to a Sarah Lee cake or a Tesco quiche?  But when people buy eggs they buy free-range.  Also, why should the public have the right to choose inhumane living conditions for animals in order to shave a few pennies from the family’s grocery bill? What gives us the right to make chickens pay the price so that we can buy an extra packet of fags or half a pint of beer?

Spot the difference - Free-range chickens

Germany got rid of its battery cages five years ago. This year, as the rest of the EU was switching to enriched cages, Germany moved further ahead to be totally cage- free.  It can be done, it’s what the public prefers and it is the future.  I don’t blame British farmers; they operate in a commercial environment and have to be cost conscious.  It’s up to the regulators to set minimum standards and these should be humane, in line with public attitudes and fit for the current era not the 1950s.  We don’t have to wait for the whole EU to agree on this. As Germany has proved you can chose to unilaterally exceed the minimum standards.

Perhaps when all our chickens are free-range, or as the RSPCA put it in their Freedom Food certification, when “every animal reared for food has a happy, healthy life…with an environment that meets their needs…providing a stimulating environment that enables the animals to exhibit their natural behaviour”, then we might have room to be sanctimonious.