J Sainsbury Plc: Corporate Crimes

Promoting GM Food

Since Lord Sainsbury of Turville's departure, J Sainsbury PLC has steered well clear of promoting GM crops in its own name, but with Lord Sainsbury's and Christopher Stone of Diatech's large shareholdings in the company, money spent at Sainsbury's is still likely to support biotechnology, whether through funding research through the Gatsby Trust, or through investments in Diatech and Innotech (which are backed by Lord Sainsbury), or through the large donations which Lord Sainsbury has given to the Labour party, (which certainly appear to have brought Lord Sainsbury rewards in the shape of a peerage and an appointment as Science and Technology Minister, and in turn have promoted his agenda.)

According to the Guardian, Lord Sainsbury owns, though his ownership of Diatech, a biotechnology patent, and[39] in the December 1997 Register of Lords' Interests, before he was made a minister, he declared that he was a 'holder of licensed plant biotechnology patent'. However, Lord Sainsbury has denied the Guardian's allegation that the patent is the cauliflower mosaic promoter, which was at the centre of the Arpad Pusztai affair[40].

Christopher Stone owns 5% stake in Sainsburys and is also the Chief Executive of Diatech. Money spent in Sainsburys stores is also enriching this man and his support for biotechnology.

Lord Sainsbury has also lent his support to the extremely controversial cloning of human embryo cells for gene therapy[41].

Undue Influence On Government

(See also Influence section for information on Lord Sainsbury of Turville)

In July 1997 John Prescott overruled Richmond council's objection to a huge out-of-town Sainsbury store. Tony Blair denied it had anything to do with Lord Sainsbury's £2 million donation to the Labour party[42].

Destroying Small Farmers

The price which farmers receive for their produce frequently fails to cover the cost of production, and consequently only farmers which produce on a very large scale and can therefore produce more cheaply can afford to carry on this way. For others, spiralling debt has become the norm and has forced many out of business. Despite the general culture of isolation and despair in farming, several protests have taken place against supermarkets. It is difficult to be precise about the scale of the problems encountered by suppliers in their dealings with supermarkets because farmers are too afraid to lose their contracts to speak openly. John Breach of the Fruit Growers' Association described the risk of being de-listed for raising objections to terms and conditions as 'very real'.[43]

Many of the criticisms levelled at supermarkets by suppliers do not specify which is involved, because of a fear of losing contracts.

As the government's Competition Commission found, many suppliers will not talk about their experiences, nor even fill in questionnaires. The Commission's report is available at: www.competition-commission.org.uk/reports/446super.htm#full

Supermarkets claim that they cannot set prices because they buy from processors not directly from farmers, and therefore pay market prices, which not allowed to be fixed. This, on one hand, is a result of World Trade Organisation policy, and shows how unfair these rules are towards small producers who are not allowed to systematically receive a fair price for their products. On the other hand, Sainsbury's can take part in fairly trading tea and coffee, so there is no reason why it could not introduce lines of fairly traded farm products. As a company at the top of the supply chain, Sainsbury's could, if it believed in a fair price, instigate a fair trade system for farm products.

Another favourite argument is that the price paid by retailers is not the most important issue, rather that farmers are suffering from the high rate of exchange of the pound, which gives them relatively less subsidy money. This is also a favourite argument of the National Farmers Union, but it is really quite peripheral. The reason why farmers need so much subsidy money in the first place is because they have been paid less and less for their produce over the years. Consumers should pay an honest price which covers the costs of the producers, and then subsidies would not be needed, since subsidies are a symptom of processors and retailers offloading costs onto taxpayers. It should be noted that so-called 'free' trade is not an answer to this because it is basically the same as we have now, except without the cushion of subsidies, and it results in a race to the bottom for standards and prices, which means only the largest can survive.

Sainsbury's cannot be the saviour of British farming because it cannot deal on a human scale. It can only achieve apparently cheap prices through dealing in bulk and this excludes small producers. Supermarkets do sometimes begin to deal with small producers, but only with a view to making them larger and more 'economical' to deal with.

Causing Climate Change

Like every other supermarket, Sainsbury's transports it goods far further than necessary because it can only deal in bulk and profits from economies of scale if it has only a few distribution depots. Even if food is produced near to the shop where it is bought, it will at least have been driven to a regional distribution centre and back, and probably further if it has been processed or packaged. Sainsbury's is kind enough to show us how much CO2 its supermarkets emit at: www.j-sainsbury.com/csr/envrep2001/html/perform/energyindex.html and its transport at: www.j-sainsbury.com/csr/envrep2001/html/perform/transportindex.html

It has made improvements in its transport but its supermarkets have diminished the effect of this. Sainsbury's Environmental Report 2000 claims that the chain had reduced its transport by 3.27 million kilometres per year since 1997, which does indeed sound impressive, but it makes one wonder how many kilometres they were doing in the first place and why?[44]

Having An Unhealthily Long food Chain

In December 2001, the Guardian alleged that Sainsbury's had been selling chicken breasts with altered "use-by" dates. The supermarket chain said that the chicken breasts were no longer on sale and it was shocked by the Guardian's findings. It has launched an inquiry. Following allegations by a worker at one of Sainsbury's suppliers, the Guardian investigated the giant Lloyd Maunder poultry plant in Devon - which supplies 20% of all Sainsbury's fresh chicken, and found:

       * Replacement use-by labels being applied, adding an extra 48 hours to the shelf life given by the previous processor

       * "Portioned" chicken being brought in from a Wolverhampton firm, GMB, which sources some of its meat from Europe (although the chicken in question was labelled as British Farm Standard) and is not approved by Sainsbury's as
         a supplier.

Sainsbury's says the food labelling regulations have not been breached: "The use-by dates on the packs are not use-by dates as defined in the regulations." The Guardian observed GMB use-by dates of November 25 on vacuum packs of chicken breasts - six days after they had been killed. When they arrived at the Lloyd Maunder factory, they were repackaged with new labels carrying use-by dates of November 27. This brought the chilled chicken up to the maximum age permitted by Sainsbury's - eight days old.

Sainsbury's says it can trace all its chicken back to approved and inspected slaughterhouses, but the Guardian's evidence showed that in the case of the chicken breasts sold as part of a "buy one, get one free offer", it did not know that a sub-supplier was involved.

Andrew Maunder, a director of Lloyd Maunder, said chicken from GMB Meats had been repacked for Sainsbury's but that it was meat originally sold to GMB by Lloyd Maunder. "It is our understanding that the product supplied to Sainsbury's is not only British but from our own source". Lloyd Maunder had reassured Sainsbury's that outside suppliers were only used to help with this one-off promotion[45].

Even if no regulations were actually broken, this sorry tale tells us a lot about the strange way we cart our food around before we eat it.

Effects On Communities

The appearance of a new Sainsbury's store has much the same effect on communities as with other supermarkets: People are seduced by having everything under one roof, usually with cheap and convenient parking nearby, and begin to desert smaller traders, thus causing the decline of high streets, and resulting unemployment. Much more on this topic can be found at: www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/food_supermarkets/supermarkets.html#Anchor-Destroying-35882

Brighton residents are currently trying to stop Sainsbury's building a store on the railway station goods yard site (more information at:www.solarcity.co.uk/BUDD), and a proposed new store is also meeting opposition in Westbury on Trym, where there are at least 7 supermarkets within approximately four miles already, including a Wal Mart. [See forthcoming Corporate Watch briefing Checkout Chuckout].

Sainsburys and Tesco "have been fiercely criticised by the Citizen Organising Foundation for charging higher prices in poor areas than rich ones[46]." This disgraceful strategy seems to rely on the poor being more of a captive market then the wealthy and rather exposes all the concern supermarkets periodically show for their less well-off customers when they defend marketing strategies such as loss-leaders.

Cutting Health And Safety Corners

In 1998 an inquest jury found that Maurice Disney, a forklift truck driver for Sainsbury's, had been unlawfully killed in an accident at work. A safety switch on his forklift had been disconnected and it went out of control and crushed him. An independent engineer told the inquest that the accident would never have happened if the truck had been properly maintained. Sainsbury's admitted the safety breaches and were fined £425,000[47].

Aiding Animal Abuse

According to the Financial Times, Lord Sainsbury was involved in pressing the Royal Bank of Scotland to prolong a Pounds 22.6m loan to Huntingdon Life Sciences in a last ditch attempt to save the drug-testing company threatened with receivership. Lord Sainsbury spoke twice to senior Royal Bank executives and is thought to have stressed the damage that would be done to its reputation, especially with other pharmaceutical companies, if it refused to delay[48].

According to Uncaged, the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force (PICTF) was set up following a meeting in November 1999 between the Prime Minister and the CEOs of Astra Zeneca, Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. Lord Sainsbury chaired the working group that discussed how to weaken vivisection regulations[49].

Proposals by Cambridge University to build a multimillion pound primate research centre near the village of Girton, north of Cambridge, were unanimously rejected by the local authority, but in a letter written by Lord Sainsbury, and seen by The Observer, the Minister has given full backing to the project, which he describes as 'nationally important'[50].

References

[39] www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,208069,00.html Revealed: Lord Sainsbury's interest in key gene patent. The Guardian, 16 Feb 1999 [40] BBC News, 16th February 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_280000/280312.stm [41] The Daily Express, 4th October 1999. [42] Monbiot, George, Captive State, MacMillan, 2000, p.199-200 [43] George Monbiot, Captive State, Macmillan, 2000 p.184 [44] J Sainsbury plc, Environmental Report 2000, p. 10 [45] Dates altered on chicken sold at Sainsbury's, The Guardian, Thursday December 6, 2001 [46] George Monbiot, Captive State, MacMillan, 2000, p.186 [47] Confederation of British Wool Textiles, Health and Safety News, Issue No. 23, January 2000, www.cbwt.co.uk/health/hsnews23jan.pdf [48] Move to save drug-test group. Financial Times, 17th January 2001 www.shac.net/archives/010117a.html [49] www.uncaged.co.uk/news0108.htm [50] Fury Over Green Belt Lab. The Observer, Sunday 4th November 2001