Call for Supermarket Code of Practice

Archived

Saturday, 24 January 2004

An alliance of 15 environmental, farming and consumer organisations have called for a new statutory code of practice to be imposed on the UK's biggest supermarkets. The alliance – which includes the Soil Association, Farmers For Action, and Farm – said it wanted the existing code scrapped whatever the outcome of the Office of Fair Trading's impending review of the code.

It also called for the new code to be backed up by a supermarket watchdog, created to ensure that it would benefit consumers, protect suppliers and stop supermarkets abusing their market power.

The alliance argued there was strong evidence that the existing code was ineffective and made it difficult for both UK and international suppliers to invest in environmental or animal welfare standards.

It also made it difficult to improve working conditions because supermarkets were passing unreasonable costs back down the supply chain.

The watchdog called for by the alliance would have the power to initiate legal action against companies that breached the new supermarket code of practice and would ensure that all investigations were made public.
A recent survey of UK farmers showed that a third of those who had experienced unfair treatment by supermarkets did not complain because of "fear of delisting". The alliance has argued that this problem would be eliminated by the establishment of a new supermarket watchdog.

Source: www.soilassociation.org