food ethics

animal welfare in food production

Meat

We assure basic animal welfare through farm assurance standards, which are sometimes signified by the Red Tractor Mark or Quality Standard Mark. In 1994, we became the first retailer to adopt the RSPCA Freedom Food scheme, which seeks to improve welfare standards for animals. We still offer a larger selection of Freedom Food labelled products than any other major retailer, and also stock a range of organic meat and dairy products.

As a minimum, all of our standard, fresh chicken is produced to our higher-welfare Elmwood standards. The chickens are housed in naturally ventilated and sunlit barns and given 30% more space than standard chickens, to allow them to move around. Each barn is furnished with straw bales, perches and pecking objects to keep the birds stimulated. Our chickens grow slower through the use of a naturally balanced, high cereal vegetarian diet. They will never be given antibiotics unless they are ill and visited by a vet, and will never be fed growth promoters or digestive enhancers designed to increase weight gain. Our chickens have six hours of darkness each day to allow them to rest; 50% more than most other supermarket chickens.

In fact, we stipulate additional animal welfare standards for all of our fresh meat products, restricting transportation time for live animals to six hours, rather than the 12 allowed by current UK legislation, and requiring all livestock to be pre-stunned prior to slaughter. All of our fresh beef, turkey, duck, pork, sausages and chicken meat is sourced from the UK.

Free-range eggs

Since the end of 2006, all of our own-brand shell eggs have been Freedom Food free-range or organic, assuring higher standards than for standard free-range eggs. In February 2008, we decided to ban the sale of eggs from caged hens from all of our Food stores. We are also working to phase out the use of these eggs as ingredients in our own-brand products.

Our commitment to the welfare of egg laying hens saw us named Retailer of the Year 2007 by the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, and given Compassion in World Farming’s Good Egg 2008 award.