The Rise and Fall of the Food Supermarkets in UK

The Rise and Fall of the Food Supermarkets in UK

With thanks to Corporate Watch for informative materials.=

During the last three decades, the <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">United Kingdom has been trans= formed from
what Napoleon described as a 'nation of shop-keepers', with innumerable sma= ll
businesses, to a supermarket culture dominated by a handful of large retail= ers.
Their formula for success is simple - they operate efficiently, they provid= e
a one-stop shop and they enjoy consumer confidence. Today they wield immens= e
influence over the way we grow, buy and eat our food. They are shaping our<= br> landscape, our health and the way we interact socially, and these changes a= re
going unchallenged because of our fast food lifestyles; consumers want quic= k
access to a wide choice of goods at low prices. But, such 'choice' has come=
at a price…

Supermarkets and Industrial farming damage you life and your health<= /span>

The Conservative Government tightened up planning restrictions on out-of-to= wn
supermarkets in 1993 and 1996 as it became clear that they were damaging
to the countryside, town centres and local econ= omies, as well as increasing
traffic. This was supported by New Labour who promised to rejuvenate city centres and tightened up planning restrictions including a moratorium on
the sale of school playing fields for out-of-town supermarket developments.=
As a result, supermarkets have recolonised the high street with a whole new=
breed of convenience stores, many open 24 hours, such as Tesco Metro and
Sainsbury Local, as well as petrol forecourt stores. Stores such as Tesco Express and Sainsbury Central are aimed at passers-by and harried commuters=
looking predominantly for packaged ready-meals.

Manipulating Brussels regulations in order to Corner the Markets

Health and safety regulations have called cheeses made in the farmho= use kitchen
and sold directly to the consumer a 'health risk', and two week old process= ed
yoghurt in a supermarket chiller cabinet, 'safe'. In Britain, less than 1%
of food poisonings are caused by dairy products, yet some of the most strin= gent
regulations relate to it. The EU suggests keeping cheeses at temperatures t= hat
will not endanger human health. Whilst Scot= land keeps to that wording, in England
this is interpreted as being kept below 8 degrees C. This requires installi= ng
costly refrigerators. Such laws have destroyed small artisan cheese makers.=

Live cheeses need natural temperatures! Otherwise they are rendered dead cheeses
and go off very quickly.

Evidence tells us that the recent increase in food poisonings and animal diseases
are the consequence of the industrial farming and processing system, not th= e
practices of small farmers.

In particular, one could note the health risks of contracting human variant=
CJD from Mechanically Recovered Meat (MRM), the meat slurry made from spray= ing
meat off the bone with a high pressure hose, that goes into cheap burgers.
Did you know that you were feeding your kids MEAT SLURRY?

Producers are merely assembly-line workers producing standardised products,
designed by technicians.

"Since December our prices have fallen by up to 10p per pound a= t a time
when they should normally be going up. The industry could end up dumping thousands
of tonnes of the best UK apple crop we have seen fo= r many years. The main reason
for this problem is a lack of shelf space allocated to us by our supermarke= ts.
Cheap imports from overseas have not helped the situation.

"
If the major supermarkets continue to force prices down in this way, the UK=
won't have a top fruit industry in ten years time, and all our orchards wil= l
be grubbed up"

Martin Harrell, an apple grower from Gloucestershire<= /p>

What about those fresh hand picked strawberries? Better wash them thoroughly!!!

A Panorama documentary screened in June 2000 exposed just how vulner= able migrant
workers are to exploitation by 'gangmasters'. Gangmasters, who act as an informal
employment agency, hire casual labour to work on industrial farms, in packhouses
and canning factories to produce much of the food that ends up on supermark= et
shelves. The film illustrates how migrant workers from Eastern Europe are housed
in damp totally unhygienic accommodation, moved around so they cannot make<= br> friends or learn English and are unable to return home as they are indebted=
to the gangmasters who pay them next to nothing. As many have come to the <= st1:country-region w:st=3D"on">UK
illegally and speak poor English, they have no means of redress and end up<= br> trapped in a cycle of work and low pay at the hands of the gangmasters.

If they don’t provide them with decent human habitation…= do they
actually provide them with decent loos, showers= or other washing facilities…or
even toilet paper? The mind boggles!

Packet fruit denies our children the taste of real and natural produ= cts. Only
the wealthy can afford top quality traditionally grown fruit daily and that=
type of fruit is never packaged. What we put in our children’s lunchb= ox
is nothing like the traditional varieties that we had prior to 1963.

Farmers are losing out to big industrial growers of industrialized foodstuf= fs.

Even though the global food sector continues to expand, now standing= at one
and a half trillion US dollars a year, farmers are getting a tiny share. Fi= fty
years ago, farmers in Europe and North America received between 45-60% per
cent of the money that consumers spent on food. Today, that proportion has<= br> dropped dramatically to just 7% in the UK and 3.5% in the USA, b= ut remains
at 18% in France. In 1939, Britain had half a million farms, most less than
100 acres and worked by around 15% of the population. Britain= today has lost
over a third of its farms and the agricultural workforce is in serious decl= ine.
Less than 2% of the = UK workforce is currently engaged in farming,

The Cheap Food Myth

Cheap food is a myth. The consumer pays three times: once in the sho= p, twice
through direct subsidies to farmers, and finally indirectly in taxes cleani= ng
up the mess left by industrial agriculture and subsidi= sing transport infrastructure.

It has, for example, cost the government over a billion pounds to install t= he
equipment necessary to remove nitrates and pesticides from our water.

The consumer also pays the price in ill health and increased risk of diseas= e.
The drive for cheap food has been behind every major food catastrophe of th= e
past decade. Feeding ground-up animals to cattle - who are natural herbivor= es
- as a cheap source of protein is generally recognised= as the initial cause
of BSE. Salmonella is endemic in chickens and their eggs because the broile= r
system delivers cheaper poultry products. E. coli is a by-product of intens= ive
livestock practices. Infectious Salmon Anaemia = virus (ISA) in salmon is caused
by the broiler system being applied to fish.

The costs of BSE and Foot and Mouth disease could well average £4 bil= lion
each and then there are the costs of our unhealthy diets on the National He= alth
Service.

Further liberalisation of markets through the Agreement on Agriculture, part
of the World Trade Organisation, will mean that= our cheap food will continue
to be subsidised by environmental and social destruction as well as animal
exploitation in poorer countries and the UK. Opening up markets to 'develop= ing
countries' will not benefit poor plantation workers, rather the multination= al
corporations who own the infrastructure by which food is transported around=
the world, such as international grain traders, Cargill and ADM who control=
80% of the world's grain trade.

The costs of BSE and Foot and Mouth disease could well average £4 bil= lion
each and then there are the costs of our unhealthy diets on the National He= alth
Service

The current pattern of supermarket consolidation will not help matters. At<= br> a recent seminar help by the Grocer, ex-CEO of Somerfield, David Simon, cla= imed
that the proposed takeover of Safeway will be a 'killing ground' for weak b= rand
and private-label suppliers, and hence the farmers who supply them. They wi= ll
face crippling reductions in margins and the possibility of losing their en= tire
business.

High quality meat???

To make a profit, the supermarkets and processors prefer to deal in = bulk with
a standardised product.

Some 750 million battery chickens are produced for consumption each year in=
the United Kingdom. Intensively raised chickens grow so quickly that they cannot
support their own weight. According to the Agriculture and Food Research Council,
more than half have developed serious bone defects by the age of six weeks.=

Animals are packed in as tightly as possible, gorged on high-protein feed (= such
as bonemeal) and dosed with hormones and antibiotics before being shipped t= o
equally huge slaughterhouses where speed and quantity count for more than sanitation.

In his shocking best-seller, 'Fast Food Nation', Eric Schlosser reveals how=
difficult it is to make sure that meat destined for consumption as fast foo= d
(whether sold through restaurants or for home cooking) is not contaminated<= br> in the slaughterhouse. Cattle hides are pulled off by machine, and if the machine
has not been cleaned properly, dirt and manure can fall into the meat - and=
end up in your lunch.

This is happening in the UK…and we are importing chickens from the Far
East grown in far worse conditions!

Furthermore, the closure of small abattoirs as a result of the UK gove= rnment's
over-stringent interpretation of international health and safety regulation= s
has encouraged long journeys for live animals. Journeys of 200-400 miles to=
slaughter are not unusual for animals today; the average journey from farm<= br> to abattoir has been estimated at 100 miles. Supermarkets regularly make a<= br> premium selling 'Scotch beef' and 'Welsh lamb' despite the fact that they m= ay
have only been transported across the country and pastured in Scotland or Wales
for just two weeks. Lying can double your profits!

Thirty years ago, there were slaughterhouses in most small country t= owns and
even some villages. Since joining the EU in 1973, however, more than 70% of=
licensed red meat abattoirs have been closed due to the overzealous British=
interpretation of EU regulations. The result, of course, has been higher co= sts
to the farmer and more stress on animals being transported to the few remai= ning
slaughterhouses.

Collecting animals from different farms and forcing them into lorries with
strange unknown beasts

causes more stress to an animal than slaughter itself does.

Dangerous chemical usage in food and farming

Some pesticides used in the UK today are, in excessive do= ses, highly carcinogenic,
hormone disrupting and cause damage to the nervous system.

Lindane is the last organo-chlorine to be used widely in Europe, although its
licence was revoked in December 2001. It is, ho= wever, used extensively in the
global South, especially on cocoa. The European diet may well exceed the recommended
FAO/WHO dosage by twelve times.

Glyphosate/Glufosinate Ammonium are broad spectrum herbicides used widely,
and also on GM crops. Glyphosate is widely considered to be safer than othe= r
pesticides on the market, but there is evidence of toxic effects on humans<= span class=3DGramE>,
environmental toxicity and resistance in some target weed species. It is therefore
untrue that it is totally safe and environmentally friendly, as some agrochemical
companies have claimed.

Studies show that glufosinate ammonium causes adverse health effects= in animals.
It is also likely to leach into drinking water sources, could increase nitr= ate
leaching, and is toxic to beneficial soil micro-organisms. It is currently<= br> banned on winter-sown crops in the UK due to the danger of run-o= ff into water
courses.

Equally worrying are hormone-disrupting chemicals which bio-accumula= te within
the body. One commonly used in food packaging to line food cans and lids is=
bisphenol A.

Social Structure Damage

Supermarkets have become all powerful by putting smaller retailers o= ut of
business.

I have personally been victim of this procedure and know how vehemen= tly supermarkets
encourage reports from managers about any local competition, no matter how<= br> small. They have used varying methods to remove those competitors, not leas= t
local council environmental health harassment while they themselves get awa= y
with gross misdemeanours because they have thei= r own in house ‘environmental
health control’ Anyone who has tried to complain about something seriously
amiss and been told to take it to the supermarket concerned will know what<= br> I am talking about. Mild cases get a bit of compensation and possibly an apology.
Really serious cases often get ‘lost’ A small retailer committing
a mild offence will get slaughtered by the local EHO and possibly go to pri= son!

In their Ghost Town Britain reports (2003), the New Economics Foundation (NEF)
revealed that between 1995 and 2000 we lost roughly one fifth of our local<= br> shops and services over the five years to 2002, around 50 specialist stores=
closed every week. In 1960, small independent retailers had a 60% share of<= br> the food retail market. By 2000, their share was reduced to 6% while the multiples
share increased to 88%.

With our high streets disappearing and our town centre= s shrinking, we are losing
a focal point for community life and a place for meaningful interaction bet= ween
people of different classes, cultures, ages and lifestyles. According to Caroline
Lucas MEP, half the nation now shops in 1000 giant superstores.

Most obviously independent food stores close because the 'under-one-roof' format
of the superstore seems to offer more choice and makes shopping 'more convenient',
as does free car-parking or free buses. Many have also mimicked the idea of=
independent deli-style food counters with ‘expert’ salespeople
(I have yet to find an expert on one of these!!). This, however, can no way=
replicate the sense of community created by the high street, nor the level<= span class=3DGramE>,
range and quality of employment. Supermarkets have a totally different atmosphere
to your local store. People push their trolleys up the endless anonymous ai= sles
in a trance, and then queue impatiently at the checkout: its hardly a conducive
environment to make a meaningful connection with your neighbours or the har= ried
checkout operator.

Waste

One-third of the 25 million tonnes of wa= ste produced in Britain<= /st1:place> in 1997 was
packaging

The average household spends £470 per year= on packaging - almost a sixth
of food expenditure Disposable packaging is subsidised= : the collection, landfill
and pollution costs are borne by the taxpayer. Supermarkets have persistent= ly
lobbied against returnable packaging as too labour intensive, refusing to stock
it.

Ever Wondered Why it Rots and Moulds the = moment you get it Home

Your dinner spends most of its life in the lorry park on the motorway;waiting
for a call!

All food sold in supermarkets is transported, by suppliers or supermarket
trucks, to regional distribution centres (RDCs) around the country before being
distributed back to supermarkets. Sainsbury, for example, has only 12 depot= s
for chilled goods. Supermarkets work on the principle of 'Just In Time' delivery
with products rushed to superstores as and when they are needed.

As storage is expensive, the supermarkets persuade farms and manufacturers<= br> to store produce on their behalf leading to refrigerated juggernauts visiti= ng
farms daily collecting just a few pallets of produce. These trucks thus bec= ome
'warehouses on wheels'. Supermarkets claim that a more centralised system means
more efficient transportation, with fewer lorries delivering to supermarkets.
However, this does not acknowledge that lorries carrying produce from farms
must travel further to the RDCs. Supermarkets are also increasingly telling=
farmers to deliver the goods themselves to the RDCs. Passing yet another co= st
onto the suppliers. According to the 'Eating Oil' report, the food system accounts
for up to 40% of all UK road freight.

Like many retailers and processors, all the major corporate agri-businesses=
and supermarkets continue to use refrigeration machinery and coolant materi= als,
which use massive volumes of CFC and now HFC chemicals. These are both pote= nt
ozone depletors. Refrigeration systems also use vast amounts of electricity=
and therefore contribute to the burning of fossil fuels and global warming.=

As well as being environmentally unsustainable, our reliance on fossil fuel= s
make the UK vulnerable to food and fuel crises.

That fresh baked loaf of bread you opened this morning that now has green
spots probably just spent a week on the M.1 in a mobile fridge!<= /span>

Undue influence on government

The food industry is not short of friends in high places to make sure that
its voice is heard more clearly than those of the people it has put out of<= br> business.

Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco, sits on four government task forces, = and Lord
Sainsbury, although officially no longer part of Sainsbury Plc, is now Mini= ster
for Science and Innovation and a major donor to the Labour Party.

Corporate interests are well represented on the Policy Commission for Food
and Farming set up by the Government to decide the future of farming in Britain= .
These include Iain Ferguson of Tate & Lyle Plc (formerly of Unilever Pl= c)
and Sir Peter Davies of Sainsbury's.

Archie Norman, former chief executive of Asda, is currently Conserva= tive MP
for Tunbridge Wells. He was a key advisor to Wi= lliam Hague and a member of
the shadow cabinet, where he was dubbed the 'Green-belt destroyer'.

The outspoken Lord Haskins is probably the most influential food industrialist.
Former chairman of supermarket own-brand suppliers, Northern Foods and Expr= ess
Dairies, the UK's largest processed food and liquid milk processors, he also
has the ear of Tony Blair on farming matters. He sits on various government=
task-forces and is rural recovery co-ordinator = for areas affected by Foot and
Mouth disease.

Tesco and Asda both sponsored fringe meetings at the Labour Party Conference
in 2003.

The manipulation of health and safety requirements=

One way in which small food producers have been systematically put o= ut of
business is through excessive hygiene regulation only satisfied through cos= tly
machinery or processes. These regulations were initially drawn up in 1995 b= y
the WTO, although were designed to assure that food production conforms to<= br> the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Limit (HACCP), a standard original= ly
designed by Pillsbury, a multinational food company that markets Haagen Daz=
and Burger King[34]. This was at the request of NASA who wanted to assure t= he
purity of food available to its astronauts. It is also the standard used by=
Codex Alimentarius, the corporate-dominated UN body that regulates food standards.

Thirty years ago, there were slaughterhouses in most small country t= owns and
even some villages[35]. Since joining the EU in = 1973, however, more than 70%
of licensed red meat abattoirs have been closed due to the overzealous UK interpretation
of EU regulations. Under the 1992 EU Directive, ‘taps must not be han= d
operable’. This was translated in UK regulation as ‘any t= aps shall
not be operable by hand or arm’ (adding £300 per unit). ‘Fittings
shall not be made of wood’ became ‘no wood is allowed anywhere<= br> within the slaughter hall or any workroom’ etc. The net result has be= en
the need for cattle to be transported long distances, in crammed unhygienic=
conditions and considerable stress, to the few remaining abattoirs. Thus reducing
the quality of meat and the increasing the costs incurred on the farmer.

It has also made small farmers' lives difficult. It is simply not possible
to conform with many of the health and safety regulations if you want to se= ll
a few dozen litres of milk and eggs to your neighbours. In the U= K, less than
1% of food poisonings are caused by dairy products, yet some of the most stringent
regulations relate to it; regulations which have destroyed, for example, sm= all
artisan cheese makers[36]. These laws make cakes= from the farmhouse kitchen
sold directly to the consumer a health risk, whilst two week old processed<= br> yoghurt in a supermarket chiller cabinet, safe.

Recent epidemics in food poisonings and outbreaks like BSE are a consequence
not of small producers but of the industrial farming and processing system.=
This is a system where animals are merely commodities: pumped full of antibiotics
and growth hormones, unloved, and kept in cramped conditions where disease<= br> can spread fast. The risk of contracting human variant CJD from Mechanicall= y
Recovered Meat (MRM), the meat slurry that goes into cheap burgers made fro= m
spraying meat off the bone with a high pressure hose, should have been fors= een,
and likewise with the unlabelled bi-products of the beef industry, such as<= br> vitamin pills encased in gelatine or bovine ser= um derived from British cows,
which was used in the polio vaccine during the height of the BSE crisis, as=
well as in other common vaccines, until 1993

These things WERE known as early as 1987 from my own personal experi= ence and
probably long before that. I was often informed of practices and opinions b= y
a supplier at Pershore Wholesale Market in Birmingham from 1987-1994 For instance
the following was reported to me at the time we were no longer allowed to b= uy
the freshly cut sections of beef off the hung carcass but had to buy blood<= br> soaked cryovac packs of the cuts we required. These had been killed using t= he
methods described below * and believe me it was the death knell of decent British
Beef.

What consumers did not know was that they were being fobbed of with old cow=
meat that had been tenderized with these chemical solutions during slaughte= r.
Meat that only pie makers and cheap mass producers would buy otherwise. We<= br> were paying the same price as for prime meat! The cryovac packs were no mor= e
for hygiene than they were for disguising the crap we were forced to buy. <= br>
Most Midland restaurants had the choice = of this rubbish or the time consuming
search for a decent farm outlet still slaughtering its own beef. However th= e
government soon put a stop to that. Not too long before the BSE crisis developed.
Funny that this was a dairy cow disease and they were now forcing us to eat=
the damn things!

This is what they injected into cows to turn them into ‘Tender Beef’ the
substance starts to partially digest the muscle prior to slaughter…th= e
animal must have its heart beating while the stuff gets around its body…they
don’t tell you that bit but hey. Are we stupid or what?

*The postexsanguination vascular infusion process was developed by M= PSC, Inc.
(St. Paul, MN) to reduce meat variability and to improve meat quality. The
process involves stunning and exsanguination by severing the jugular veins<= span class=3DGramE>,
and then infusing substrates through the left carotid artery. Little resear= ch
has been published on this process. Farouk et al. (1992b) found that vascul= ar
infusion with a solution composed of 0.23% dextrose, 0.21% glycerin, 0.14%<= br> phosphates, and 0.10% maltose improved tenderness of longissimus dorsi stea= ks
from culled dairy cows. Furthermore, Farouk et al. (1992a) found that vascu= lar
infusion of lambs with the same solution at 10% of live weight decreased longissimus
dorsi Warner-Bratzler shear force (WBSF) values.

Calcium is involved in postmortem acceleration of myofibrillar tenderization
of meat through activation of the calpain enzyme system (Koohmaraie, 1996).=
Calcium chloride has been studied extensively as a way to manipulate the calpain
enzyme system to accelerate postmortem tenderization (Koohmaraie et al., 19= 89;
Koohmaraie and Shackelford, 1991; Polidori et al., 2000). Infusion interart= erially
at 10% of lamb live weight with 0.30 M CaCl2 dramatically increased tissue<= br> calcium in infused carcasses and decreased WBSF values (Koohmaraie et al.,
1990). On the other hand, Farouk et al. (1992a) demonstrated that prerigor<= br> infusion of lamb carcasses with 0.15 M CaCl2 decreased tenderness 35%. No research
has been conducted on the effects of vascular infusion of CaCl2 in young, grain-finished
beef cattle, and minimal research has been conducted with a solution of saccharides,
sodium chloride, and phosphates on carcass traits and meat palatability. Therefore,
the objectives of our study were to evaluate the effects of two vascular infusion
treatments on carcass traits and meat palatability of young, grain-fed beef=
cattle.

And here is a description of the taste tests!<= /p>

The descriptive flavor profile panel evaluated the warmed-over longissimus
lumborum muscle from CaCl2 carcasses as having less beef flavor identificat= ion,
less brown roasted flavor, and more soapy/chemical flavor than warmed-over<= br> longissimus lumborum and semitendinosus muscles from MPSC-infused and CON carcasses
and the semitendinosus from CaCl2-infused carcasses (all P < 0.05). The<= br> CON semitendinosus muscle had more soapy/chemical flavor than the CON longi= ssimus
lumborum muscle. There were a few differences (P < 0.05) among the treat= ment
combinations for the traits of metallic, soapy/chemical, and cardboard, but=
they were inconsistent. Both the warmed-over longissimus lumborum and semitendinosus
muscles had cardboard off-flavors, in contrast to the freshly cooked muscle= s.
Within muscle, there were virtually no differences in flavor-profile characteristics
between the MPSC-infused and CON carcasses. These results agree with those<= br> of Yancey et al. (2002), who found that infusion with a MPSC solution simil= ar
to the one used in this study resulted in only small, inconsistent effects<= br> on flavor-profile characteristics of longissimus lumborum and semitendinosu= s
steaks.

In contrast to the results for steaks, ground beef patties from CaCl2-infused
carcasses that were freshly cooked and evaluated by the descriptive flavor<= br> profile panel were evaluated as having more (P < 0.05) beef flavor identification,
more brown roasted flavor, and less soapy/chemical flavor than patties from=
MPSC-infused carcasses (Table 9 ). Patties from CON carcasses had a more (P < 0.05)
brown-roasted and a less soapy/chemical flavor than those from MPSC-infused=
carcasses. The warmed-over patties from CaCl2-infused carcasses had less be= ef
flavor identification, more soapy/chemical, and more oxidized/painty flavor=
than patties from MPSC-infused carcasses. Furthermore, warmed-over patties<= br> from MPSC-infused carcasses had less soapy/chemical flavor than patties fro= m
CON carcasses, which contradicts the results for freshly cooked ground beef= .
Yancey et al. (2002) reported some statistical differences between warmed-o= ver
ground beef from MPSC-infused and CON carcasses, but the results were inconsistent.

Do the words SOYLENT GREEN ring in anyone's ears?

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