Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR KEVIN
HAWKINS AND
MR ALAN
BLACKLEDGE-SMITH
10 JUNE 2003
Q80 Diana Organ: Can I ask you to
put your British Retail Consortium hat on and, if they had been
working with farm assurance schemes within Britain, does it tend
to be that those retailers tend to have two sets of standards,
that they are trying to develop farm assurance schemes for the
product they are putting out with the red tractor on or with the
ACP standards and then they have a different set of standards
for their product that they are importing from Thailand to Brazil?
Mr Hawkins: No, I do not think
so because, when a retailer puts his brand name on something—and
I am now speaking only of those things that are sold under the
retailer's brand name, not necessarily under the manufacturer's
brand name—then all the trust and integrity that you hope
your brand name will inspire among customers applies equally to
any product wherever it is sourced.
Q81 Diana Organ: The British Poultry
Council reports to us that 90% of UK chicken and turkeys are produced
under their Assured Chicken Production and the Quality British
Turkey schemes, but what happens to the ten% that is not? Where
is that going? Are there retailers within the BRC that are taking
this product?
Mr Hawkins: I would doubt it myself,
but there are—and I must not mention names here—perhaps
a number of retail discounters around who are not necessarily
members of the BRC whose sole consideration is price and they
have made no bones about it, and it is conceivable that that is
where that residue goes.
Chairman: Approximately what proportion
of chicken meat is sold through BRC members within the UK? You
will have the information available.
Q82 Diana Organ: The market share
that you have.
Mr Hawkins: Are you talking about
fresh chicken or chicken included in ready-meals?
Q83 Chairman: Fresh chicken for a
start.
Mr Hawkins: I would need to confirm
this figure because I do not have it at my fingertips. I think
you also have to take into account of course the food service
sector who have something like now 30% of the total food consumption
market in the UK and I have no reason to suppose that they have
any less a proportion of chicken. They also have a number of retailers
who are not members of the BRC. I would have suggested to you
that possibly maybe between 50% and 60% of chicken is sold through
BRC members, but that is only my guess and I would need to verify
that.
Q84 Diana Organ: When you said that
you felt that the 10% that does not meet the sort of standards
of these schemes, you said that they might not be members of the
BRC and that they were at the lower end or the cheap end—
Mr Hawkins: Or it may go into
the food service sector.
Q85 Diana Organ: Do you know of any
of your members who do take any of this product?
Mr Hawkins: No, I do not know
of any.
Q86 Diana Organ: Can I just move
on to something you mentioned earlier about the fact that obviously
in the ACP standards, it requires companies to demonstrate that
foodstuffs do not contain antibiotic growth promoters, but we
have seen quite a lot of interest in the media recently, in press
and on TV, about the use of antibiotic growth promoters being
reintroduced and some supermarket suppliers are using them. Why
do you think that these supermarkets have suddenly decided to
allow those standards to be relaxed?
Mr Hawkins: I think you are referring
to one particularly large supermarket that was quoted in the press
as saying that they were allowing this to happen. I can only say
that we do not allow it to happen at Safeway and that it is very
clearly part of our code of practice. The supermarket that was
named would have to answer on its own behalf. Do you want to say
anything on that, Alan?
Mr Blackledge-Smith: I cannot
say more than that.
Q87 Diana Organ: Is there a view
from the British Retail Consortium that this is not the right
direction in which to go for consumer confidence and for the trust
that consumers have in what they are purchasing off the shelf?
Mr Hawkins: I think that again
one begins to shade into a competitive issue here but, as a result
of the publicity, I think the retailer concerned are probably
reviewing their policy on this.
Q88 Diana Organ: Can I lastly ask
about the farm assurance scheme. There seems to be a mismatch
of the number of farmers who state that they are red tractor/freedom
foods approved and that, when certified bodies survey, they find
that a significant number of farmers do not actually comply with
certain standards. Are you aware of concerns of compliance with
farm assurance schemes and what would the British Retail Consortium
do to address the fact that farmers are purporting to meet the
standards but actually are not?
Mr Hawkins: The supply chain really
runs from farms to the big chicken processors and retailers do
not have direct relations with those farmers and, if it comes
to a question of enforcing standards, then we look to the processors
to take action in the first instance. Yes, of course we will also
carry out some unannounced audits of individual farmers but clearly
we do rely on the processors themselves to a great extent to ensure
that their own primary producers comply with whatever standards
they are claiming to adhere to. Alan, do you wish to add anything
to that?
Mr Blackledge-Smith: I think there
is an element of compliance with the standards that exist and,
when we find examples where perhaps the auditing of a standard
has not been to the level we would expect, we would most certainly
report that back to the UKAS accreditors that normally accredit
these sorts of standards and we have done that just recently.
Diana Organ: I am a little amazed that
you are slightly ducking the issue in that you say, "We,
as retailers, do not have a direct relationship with the primary
producers, we rely on the processors." I think that the consumers
walking up and down the aisles of your supermarkets would be a
little aghast to think that you have nothing to do with the farm
that is producing the eggs or the poultry and that you say, "We
only deal with the middle guy who is the processor." I would
have thought that for your name, the brand that is important that
you are working on, you would feel that you would be able to have
a relationship that goes right back to the primary producer.
Q89 Chairman: You certainly said,
Mr Hawkins, that there are some unannounced visits.
Mr Hawkins: That is correct.
Q90 Chairman: Mr Blackledge-Smith,
how many unannounced visits did Safeway make in the last 12 months?
Mr Blackledge-Smith: I could not
give an exact number but they do—
Q91 Chairman: Is it tiny, is it significant
or very large?
Mr Blackledge-Smith: I would not
say that it is very large because there are far too many producers
compared with the number of staff that I have to have that work
carried out on an independent basis. We plan to visit every supplier
and a number of their supplying sites and do a full audit to our
standard and the way in which we would do that would be to visit
the processing plant and ask to see a list of their supplying
farms and then pick a couple at random from that particular list.
I also have a quality manager who is very much interested in the
quality end of the business but who will also arrange visits through
to the beginning of the supply chain. May I just respond to the
comment about farms. I think that we like to keep perhaps a little
distance from them because supermarkets have been accused in the
past of being rather domineering in that particular sector and
we believe that farmers are experts at what they do. However,
we still keep an interest in, as I have just said, really the
visits that we make to farms obviously in a consumer interest
in not protecting but being able to respond to consumer concerns
but also for our own education and awareness of what it is like
on the ground, as it were.
Q92 Diana Organ: Given that you do
undertake visits and that you do not want to, shall we say, tell
your granny how to suck eggs because the farmer knows how to produce
it and you are the guy that is selling it in the high street,
you each have your different role, but that you do want to have
some contact because you are trying to make sure that the product
you are putting on your shelves is as good as it can be for the
name under which it goes, can I go back to the question regarding
the problem where there is not compliance with certain farm assurance
schemes and how can the British Retail Consortium address these
problems because you do have contact with primary producers?
Mr Hawkins: It is very difficult
for a trade association like the BRC to become involved in that
degree of commercial and technical issue involving what you must
concede is thousands of farms, not just with poultry but with
pork and beef and lamb, all of whom supply a smaller number of
processors, large and again a spread of different types of companies
all shapes and sizes even within the processing area, and there
has to be a degree of trust between the retailer and his supplier,
otherwise no trading relationship can proceed. If we do not trust
our suppliers to do their best to implement these standards, then
we have no basis for a commercial relationship It is just physically
not possible for us to double-check on everything that is taking
place on every farm.
Q93 Diana Organ: I understand that
you have to have a degree of trust, but I am little disturbed
to discover that, as a retailer, you are saying, "We do not
get involved with such technical detail." I would have thought
that technical detail about the standards of the product is exactly
the sort of technical detail in which a food retailer should be
interested.
Mr Hawkins: Can I just correct
you. I said that the BRC as a trade association, whose job is
to represent its members—
Q94 Diana Organ: That is the question
I asked you, as a trade association.
Mr Hawkins: No, it cannot possibly
become involved into that level of technical detail. That is a
matter for individual members of the BRC to deal with through
their immediate suppliers to the farmers in the way that Alan
described a moment ago.
Q95 Diana Organ: If your organisation
is to be the British Retail Consortium, do you not have any sort
of policy about, shall we say, good practice within that consortium
or can any old rogue behave however they like and still be in
your consortium and it is okay?
Mr Hawkins: No. As I said right
at the outset, the BRC has a code of technical standards which
members of the BRC must sign up to. Alan, do you want to add to
that?
Mr Blackledge-Smith: All of our
suppliers will have their sites audited under the BRC standards.
Q96 Chairman: Have any members ever
left the BRC under pressure for want of complying with such standards?
Mr Hawkins: Not to my knowledge.
The resignations from the BRC are more driven by the size of the
subscription.
Q97 Chairman: Or expulsions?
Mr Hawkins: No, I do not think
so. The companies that join BRC do have standards, they do adhere
to them and they do their best within all the commercial constraints
in which they operate. It is extremely rare for anyone to be expelled
for any malpractice of any kind.
Q98 Chairman: Like Diana Organ, I
was a little concerned to hear the way in which chickens were
bred and slaughtered no doubt described as a "technical matter".
That seems to overlook the fact that there are 800 million (?)
in the United Kingdom that are being treated almost like widgets
in a plastic submarine factory. I am sure that you did not mean
that.
Mr Hawkins: No, I meant technical
as distinct from commercial. Technical includes product quality
and it includes animal welfare. I am sorry, I have used "technical"
in a very generic sense and not in a very narrow sense.
Q99 Chairman: And the trust that
you referred to that you need to have in your supplier is a trust
that is on a grand scale when your suppliers are in Brazil and
Thailand, is it not?
Mr Hawkins: Yes. Of course, some
of the sites in Brazil and Thailand are owned by companies based
in the UK, they are not all foreign owned. Clearly, therefore,
the trust we have in them in the UK must extend to their operations
in foreign countries, of which there are two with which we deal.
That does not preclude us from going out there with unannounced
audits, which we do, and we commit ourselves to doing that once
every two years.
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