Sainsbury top of the tree for organic Christmas fare: supermarkets must do more to help UK organic farmers

21 December 2001

A spot-check of five major supermarkets by the Organic Targets Campaign found J Sainsbury is top of the tree when it comes to providing home-grown, organic ingredients for a traditional Christmas meal this year. Tesco came bottom of the survey offering a very limited menu indeed despite its recent commitment to producing more organic products.

Highlights of the survey:

• None of the stores were able to supply a full organic, UK produced traditional Christmas menu
  
• J Sainsbury came out top with only two of the 11 products imported. But even they could not source UK organic sprouts, despite changing the name of their Brussel sprouts to "British Sprouts" in November as part of its British sourcing campaign
  
• Tesco came in last place despite its recent commitment to grow its organic market to £1 billion in five years
  
• Marks and Spencer, Tesco, J Sainsbury and Waitrose all provide a UK-produced organic turkey
  
• Three out of the five stores (Safeway, Tesco, Marks and Spencer) are importing organic butter from Denmark when some UK dairy farmers are selling their organic milk as conventional milk due to over-supply in the UK market
  
• Tesco is importing mild organic cheddar from Germany.

"These findings are extremely worrying for organic farmers here who may be having their worst Christmas yet following the foot and mouth crisis," says Catherine Fookes, speaking for the Organic Food and Farming Targets Campaign. "Supermarkets should be doing more to develop the domestic organic market by buying produce from UK farmers rather than from overseas. The Government must do more too. It should introduce an action plan for organic farming, and set an ambitious target for increasing the amount of UK organic produce.

A major rally and lobby of Parliament will take place on January 23rd 2002 in support of the campaign (2pm Westminster Central Hall, Storeys Gate, London).

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