The UK’s top 10 supermarkets are actively encouraging customers to buy meat products despite recent improvements in the companies’ environmental policies, a new supermarket scorecard by campaign group Feedback reveals.

The supermarkets are scored across a number of indicators for both their policies and targets on climate and meat and how those are translated into changes to what is available on the shelves in their stores. The Co-op came in as the best of the bunch but still has a long way to go, with a score of only 45 per cent. Tesco came second, with Marks and Spencer in the middle of the pack with 33 per cent, and Lidl a distant last with 17 per cent.

All 10 supermarkets were found to be using promotions to encourage customers to purchase meat products - and not just for products nearing their expiry dates. Feedback argues that “this means retailers are fuelling – and not simply responding to – demand for meat.” Products sold by half the supermarkets - Aldi, Asda, Lidl, M&S, and Tesco - bear ‘fake farm’ names such as ‘Trusted Farms’ on their own brand products, giving customers a misleading impression that their meat is produced to higher standards than it really is.

The scorecard explains how the organisation of products in supermarkets and how food is packaged and labelled is part of our ‘food environment’ - the environment “which influences how we choose, shop for, and consume food.” With 94 per cent of the UK grocery market controlled by the 10 supermarkets ranked, these retailers “have a huge influence on what we eat through the products they sell, and the way in which they market, package and promote them.”

Though more than half of the supermarkets are working to encourage the consumption of fruit and vegetables and are assigning some of their marketing budgets to promote plant-rich whole foods diets, none of them has set a target to halve meat sales by 2030, or to reduce them at all. According to the government’s Committee on Climate Change, the UK must cut meat and dairy consumption by 20 per cent by 2030 to meet its climate commitments, but Feedback is part of the Eating Better alliance of 60 NGOs pushing for a 50 per cent reduction in meat and dairy consumption in the UK by 2030, which explains the benchmark used to assess supermarkets’ commitments.

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While all the supermarkets except for Iceland and ASDA have committed to dropping meat linked to deforestation, none have actually removed these products from their shelves. Last year Tesco claimed it was on track to meet its ‘zero deforestation’ target by 2020, but Greenpeace has argued that ending the sale of meat sourced from Brazil, which Tesco did in 2018, is only part of the challenge. Chicken and pork fed on soya grown in deforested areas of the Amazon are still sold in Tesco and other stores. The problem, says Greenpeace, is that “Tesco and other companies basically have no idea where their soya came from, or how it was grown.”  

To address these and other failures, the scorecard makes several recommendations for action supermarkets should take:

• Be transparent about what they sell, their carbon emissions, and how they’re going to tackle them;

• Link the pay of supermarket executives to environmental outcomes, including meat reduction and emissions targets, and train supermarket buyers on sustainability principles, including targets set for reducing meat and dairy sales and increased fruit, vegetables and plant-based protein sales;

• In stores, prioritise fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables, get rid of meaningless labels on meat products, change store layouts, end routine promotions on meat and dairy products, and support people to buy healthy food with incentives like loyalty points weighted towards fresh fruit and vegetables.

Supermarkets, and the food sector at large, have lagged behind other businesses in making meaningful policies and setting targets to cut their impact on the planet. In the last couple of years they have begun catching up, but let’s hope they don’t emulate other business sectors in failing to take meaningful action too.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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