Red Tractor needs a visit to the shop

Monday, December 3, 2012

Retailer Sainsbury's dealt a blow to Red Tractor farm logo promoters in Britain when it announced it would remove the logo from beef, pork and lamb sold in its stores. The retailer said that too many logos were confusing for consumers and the ante was about to get upped when new, and mandatory, European Union labelling standards come into place soon.

Red Tractor claims that 79,000 farmers use its logo to promote not only a certain standard of production but that the labelled food products came from Britain.

Red Tractor pork took a beating on another side recently when the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled it could no longer claim a high welfare standard. The Authority was responding to complaints from Compassion in World Farming and 206 members of the public (the Authority decision admitted that most of those complaints came from members of the aforementioned organization) who complained that the statement "Red Tractor pork is high welfare pork" was  misleading and unsubstantiated.  

According to the ASA ruling, the Authority accepted that, while British standards were high compared to some European countries, some aspects of pig farming in Britain, such as farrowing crates, tail docking and tooth clipping were still contentious issues.

Farrowing crates now? Hmm. BP