Supermarket customers say that Tesco does not care about the food it sells

Derek Lawlor
Derek Lawlor

Two thirds of customers say they think Tesco does not care about the food it sells - an indication of how the horse meat scandal has damaged faith in the food industry.

The shocking finding was disclosed by Derek Lawlor, the supermarket group's category director for meat, fish, poultry and eggs during a speech at the Egg and Poultry Industry Conference (EPIC) in November. He said there was a "backdrop of mistrust in supermarkets," with 70 per cent of customers feeling that supermarkets no longer had control over the food they were selling. The horse meat scandal, or horsegate, as it came to be known, had had a galvanising effect on consumer trust, he said.

Horsegate arose when it was discovered that food sold as beef contained substantial amounts of horse meat. Research commissioned by Lion showed that consumers were also concerned about the quality of the eggs used as ingredients in quiche, mayonnaise and even egg sandwiches. This followed a number of health scares linked to imported eggs. A string of salmonella outbreaks were traced back to Spanish eggs and, more recently, eggs from Germany, which passed through processors in Holland, were linked to high levels of dioxin. There was also a scandal in Germany involving intensive egg being sold as organic.

Following the horse meat scandal leading retailers moved to shore up consumer confidence, but the scandal appears to have left a lasting legacy. The figures unveiled by Derek Lawlor showed that 66 per cent of customers thought Tesco did not care about its food. He told EPIC delegates that he found the figure "staggering."

"Particularly for a Tesco person, it is quite hard to see, but it is, factually what they believe," he said. "I don't think it is representative of how we actually feel about it but it is what customers say. It is quite staggering."

He said he had worked in his current role for 18 months and amongst all the people he had met - farmers, processors and Tesco people - he did not think that the sentiment could be further from the truth. "I think we genuinely get up in the morning with a passion to do it better than we did yesterday and make sure our customers get great products. But that's how they feel. So we have got to do something about it. We can't get grumpy about it; we have got to consciously make an effort to help them understand the care and attention that everybody in this room takes to ensure that they get great products."

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), told EPIC delegates that the horse meat scandal had shone a spotlight on the food supply chain like never before. The scandal had exposed some real horrors - the maps showing meat crossing seven or eight international borders and changing hands between faceless individuals had left consumers "rightly horrified," he said. People did not know where something they ate was coming from, said Peter, who was critical of the part retailers played in the crisis. "Do you really thing you can get eight burgers for a pound? What did you really think was going into it? I think the whole questionable sourcing policies of big businesses was drawn into question - the labelling, the authenticity of those products."

He said that surveys conducted by the NFU showed that consumers now wanted retailers to source British food because supply chains were shorter and transparent. Traceability was what they were looking for, he said. "That consumers want to buy more from us is a fantastic opportunity."

Derek Lawlor, whose chief executive Philip Clarke committed to buying more food from British farms very quickly after horsegate, said that Tesco had to work to restore customers' faith in what they were buying. "Customers want more reassurance than ever that the food they are buying is exactly what we say it is." he said, "They are paying more and more attention to what they are eating, and, more importantly for Tesco, customers are wanting to reward the retailer they believe is taking the most care and attention of their products." He outlined part of the company's plan to regain consumer confidence.

"When I spoke to customers, they said 'Some of your products are good, some are quite average.' I tried to understand why that was and when I got into the detail with some of my colleagues it was quite clear that we weren't involved early enough in the supply chain." He said that Tesco was not "resourced up enough" to get involved where the company should be getting involved, so it had set about investing in agriculture by increasing the size of its agricultural team, recruiting people from a farming background and by offering long term contracts to farmers. By the end of the current year Tesco hoped to have more than 250 long-term direct contracts with beef and lamb producers. The intention was to do the same with the poultry sector, he said.

"We absolutely recognise you need more confidence from us; you need to know where you are going." He said that Tesco also wanted to share some of the risk. He recognised that in some sectors feed was such a high proportion of the cost that the company wanted to try to de-risk the highs and lows. He said Tesco had employed as team of specialists and they were available to anyone in the room who wanted to mitigate the risk of volatile feed prices.

Derek said he recognised that trust in Tesco was challenged in January this year and the company wanted to address the issue. It would take time, but the journey had begun. Tesco had to regain trust and to do so the company realised that it had to give producers the confidence to invest in their businesses.