Harry Wallop

Can we trust supermarket brands?

When you pick up a packet of meat from the supermarket and it says ‘Willow Farms’, what is the image you conjure up in your mind? Do you imagine the chickens reared on this farm happily pecking around a thatched cottage, searching for grubs in a field that rolls gently down to a river flanked by weeping willows?

Of course you don’t. You’re shopping in Tesco and you’re not that stupid. The country’s biggest retailer (and the UK’s biggest private sector employer) is not buying any of its fresh produce from small-scale farmers, especially not its chickens.

Some of you, however, might reasonably expect that Willow Farm exists. That it has a geographical presence — even if it is on an industrial scale.

Even that is a little optimistic. Willow Farms is a brand. As is Rosedene Farms, which Tesco uses for some of its strawberries and blueberries, despite the bucolic image of an apple tree as its logo. The berries can come from as far afield as Morocco or Argentina.

This is why, when Tesco launched all these farm brands last year, the National Farmers Union were so upset, calling it a ‘cynical’ and ‘misleading’ ploy.

Tesco argued that these brands were nonetheless a stamp of quality, that the beef or chicken or strawberries — even if they were sourced from multiple locations — were produced exclusively for Tesco.

But even that claim now appears to have as much shelf life as some Redmere Farms spinach (origin: Spain) left out of the fridge on a warm summer’s day.

The sheer meaningless of the brands has been exposed as part of a far wider investigation undertaken by the Guardian newspaper and ITV.

The investigation — a good-old fashioned scoop — went undercover at 2 Sisters. This is not some backstreet operation.

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