Boycott Tesco starting today, improve the lives of millions of chickens now and in the future
It’s time not only to stop buying cheap chicken because of the appalling cruelty involved, but to boycott Tesco stores completely after the supermarket giant stuck two fingers up this week at animal welfare and farming groups by cutting the retail price of its standard whole chicken to £1.99. This is, of course, because the Chicken Out (see sidebar, left) and other associated campaigns have led to more and more people rejecting cheap chicken in favour of free-range and organic.
The arrogance of Tesco is incredible and we can only hope this latest move to, as the chain would say, ‘give the consumers what they want’ becomes known for what it really is, which is an effort to give Tesco what it wants—which is every penny of your hard-earned cash, and to hell with morality.
The store says bringing down the price of a bird from £3.30 will benefit ’shoppers on a budget’. It is more the case that every little helps—to use the store’s slogan—in the company’s efforts to prevent broiler chickens rotting on the shelves rejected by consumers. They aren’t selling. Everywhere you go, be it supermarkets or local butchers, free-range chickens are being sold faster than they can be bought in. What’s more, there’s a shortage.
It seems the UK has, almost overnight, rejected cruelty in chicken farming and begun demanding ethically-sourced birds.
As a vegetarian, I am delighted. I have long said I would be entirely content not to convince others to stop eating meat, but to persuade them to buy only that which has been raised well and has lived a natural life. I am not at all delighted by Tesco. I am disgusted. I will not shop at Tesco again until such time as the company reverses this latest move. I urge everyone to do the same. After all, switching to a different supermarket isn’t going to make a huge difference to your weekly outgoings or impact on your choices of food and other items. Sure, if you switch to Waitrose you will be paying a heck of a lot more for everything but a move to Morrisons or Asda won’t cause anyone any hardship.
All supermarkets are, of course, dubious in many of their practices, especially in how they treat British farmers and how they seek to deceive the public through misleading labels. But Tesco is the worst of them all, and is long overdue a dose of humility. The only people who can dish that up are the British public.
Don’t give Tesco your money anymore. Not until it learns we have the power to make or break it, no matter how big the company is.
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) says the £1.99 chicken is an ‘extremely ill-judged and short sighted’ move. How the hell can any farmer make a profit on these birds when they are being sold to the public for that price? Tesco claiming this move is good for the customer is bullshit—how can this be good for our economy, when farmers are going to end up in the red? The public and the farming industry are not two entirely separate groups. They need us, we need them.
An NFU spokesman said the decision to cut the cost of standard, intensively-reared chicken was ‘completely the wrong thing’ to do. ‘They’re devaluing the product and doing it at a time when, overall, the market is strengthening and chicken prices are rising. They’re sucking value out of the supply chain and unless Tesco is going to subsidise this, it is not a sustainable price.’
‘We have been working hard for a while to increase the amount of higher-welfare chicken we sell,’ says Tesco’s media director, Jonathan Church. Along with many other people, I beg to differ. The chain has been caught out by the upsurge in demand which was inevitable once the public became educated as to why those broiler chickens are so damn cheap. ‘No-one should feel guilty buying a chicken just because it is good value,’ Church added. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? And he’s quite wrong.
Should you feel guilty buying an animal for under three quid that has been living in misery all its short life, swimming in its own faeces and having no ability to act according to its nature? Yes. Absolutely you should. There is no excuse. If you can’t afford to buy meat from ethically-reared sources, then don’t. Or eat less but better quality. A chicken a week, or a chicken a day, is not in any way essential. Five fruit and vegetables a day are, and nobody ever went overdrawn buying a bag of carrots. Save the chicken for when you can afford to buy one that wasn’t tortured and miserable its whole life.
Behind the price cut we can easily see the real reasoning—the company has also increased orders for free-range birds, which it says makes up 30% of its total chicken sales. That figure would be even higher if the shelves weren’t empty of free-range chicken when people entered stores to buy them.
Tesco insists it has doubled the amount of free-range and organic chicken it is buying, and has seen a 70% rise in sales of premium birds compared to a year ago. ‘The only reduction we make is in the price, not the welfare,’ says Church, perhaps the most obscene and ridiculous claim ever to come from a representative of the store chain. Consumers can be ’safe in the knowledge’ that Tesco’s birds have been ‘raised in the highest welfare environment,’ he added.
Oh really, Mr Church? If that’s so, show us the pictures. Come on! Post some photos of the natural, wonderful lives those chickens had before they ended up on the shelves! You can’t. Because they didn’t. And because the truth would put most people off their dinners.
Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), which praised the chain in its latest supermarket survey for improving the environment for indoor-reared birds, believes Tesco has taken the wrong approach. CIWF Director for Research and Food Policy, Dr Lesley Lambert, made a most excellent point. ‘If Tesco is prepared to drop their prices in this way,’ she said, ‘why don’t they decrease prices on higher welfare chickens and make them more accessible to poorer consumers? While Sainsbury’s has committed to massive improvements in animal welfare, Tesco is showing its ethical credentials with this race to the bottom. Scientific research shows that many of these birds are lame and likely to be in pain and live their lives in their own faeces. Consumers have shown they will vote with their wallets on the basis of animal welfare.’
Tesco is continuing, of course, to rig the system through its bulk purchasing muscle, to ensure cruelty pays and compassion costs. But this tactic, long in use, seems to be failing where chickens are concerned.
CIWF wants to see all supermarkets move away from buying intensively-reared chickens, and provide greater welfare for birds produced indoors.
The bottom line is, Tesco, in common with all the major food retailers, now has many hundreds of thousands of tons of broiler chickens approaching their sell-by dates and nobody is buying them. In today’s decision to drop the price, the supermarket chain has utterly failed to see which way the wind is blowing. It’s not a dissimilar situation to that of Masterfoods last year, when that company ran foul of consumers by switching from use of vegetable rennet to animal rennet. Masterfoods thought, as Tesco does today, that a bit of PR spin was all that was needed. Masterfoods faced an unprecedented campaign and quickly—within a week—reversed its decision. We can make Tesco back down by employing the exact same tactics—boycotts, letter-writing, phone calls.
Don’t just wait to see how the story ends. Take action. Make a difference not only to the diet of the nation, but the welfare of animals.
Boycott Tesco. When the profit margins are hit, the supermarket giant will surely bow before the British public and beg us to come back into its stores.
tags: animal cruelty, chickens, factory farming, Tesco
3 comments on “Boycott Tesco starting today, improve the lives of millions of chickens now and in the future”
February 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Here are all the phone numbers listed on Tesco’s website. I suggest you try one or even all of them to make your disgust clear, and your commitment not to set foot in any of the company’s stores until this cruel madness is ended:
Grocery
Telephone 0845 7225533, 9am to 11pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm Saturday and 10am to 6pm Sunday
Books, Music, Video, DVD, Flowers, Games and Wine
Telephone 0845 7225533, 9am to 11pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm Saturday and 10am to 6pm Sunday
Don’t forget for your entertainment and books orders you can check your order status, track items
or make a cancellation online - click here
Tesco Direct
Telephone 0845 6004411, 8am to 11pm Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm on Saturday and 10am to 6pm on Sunday
Clubcard
Telephone 0800 591688, 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm on Saturday
Clubcard Deals
Telephone 0808 1000707, 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm on Saturday to Sunday
Tesco Stores
Telephone 0800 505555, 9am to 6pm Monday to Saturday
February 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I have just called Tesco and the number for complaining about the £1.99 chicken, and Tesco’s twisted stance on animal welfare, is 0800 505555.
I am sending back my clubcard with a letter explaining I will no longer be shopping at any Tesco store until the company reverses this latest decision, and demonstrates a clear commitment to improving the lives of chickens destined for the table.
The address to which to send your clubcard and boycott notification letter is:
Tesco Clubcard
FREEPOST SCO5043
Baird Avenue
Dundee
DD2 9XU
I urge everybody who cares about the welfare of chickens, and ending this disgraceful method of production, to send back their clubcards right now. Don’t delay. x
February 6th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
If you think you can stomach the worst of humanity creeping out from underneath the rocks to post comments on the issue of animal welfare and Tesco, head over to Sky’s news website. I warn you now, while there are a few comments left by people with consciences, the majority can only be described as revolting.
It seems for some they don’t care what they eat so long as it fills their guts to overflowing. Money is their only god and overriding concern, but at the same time these are the same kinds of people who won’t grow so much as a pot of basil on the windowsill and have no idea how to cook anything that doesn’t involve a microwave and the sound of it binging after a few minutes!
What’s particularly disturbing is the way some commentators are revelling in the idea of a £1.99 chicken. Indeed, they are gloating… Gods help us, these people breed and have children? Surely not! What are their kids going to end up like with role models like that?
Of course, the taunts of certain people in themselves mean little. Change in the world comes not from those who accept the status quo, either passively condoning or vociferously defending, but from those who are willing to take a stand. In other words, change will come. Because those who bring it about are willing to think, and think differently.
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