Tesco 'British' pork 'highly unlikely' to be from UK - Tesco let us down yet again

Doc_N

Tesco 'Red Tractor' 'British' pork 'highly unlikely' to have come from the UK:

"Two Tesco pork chops labelled as British probably came from the Netherlands, tests have revealed. The pork chops in a pack bearing the Red Tractor logo were highly unlikely to have come from the UK."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24081526


Here we go yet again with Tesco - and another reason to ditch this aggressive and untrustworthy retailer that constantly tries to pretend it's the customer's friend, but very clearly isn't!

Fake pricing, horsemeat, foreign meat dressed up as British..........where next, Tesco?

LadyDee

Doc_N wrote: »

Tesco 'Red Tractor' 'British' pork 'highly unlikely' to have come from the UK:

"Two Tesco pork chops labelled as British probably came from the Netherlands, tests have revealed. The pork chops in a pack bearing the Red Tractor logo were highly unlikely to have come from the UK."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24081526


Here we go yet again with Tesco - and another reason to ditch this aggressive and untrustworthy retailer that constantly tries to pretend it's the customer's friend, but very clearly isn't!

Fake pricing, horsemeat, foreign meat dressed up as British..........where next, Tesco?

I'm no fan of Tesco but come on - this meat was supplied by a company that guaranteed its meat was from UK. That company had bought it from another supplier. How on earth was Tesco to know that it's main supplier had either lied or been lied to?

Again - I avoid Tesco whenever I can but do you really believe most other supermarkets are any better?

Doc_N

LadyDee wrote: »

I'm no fan of Tesco but come on - this meat was supplied by a company that guaranteed its meat was from UK. That company had bought it from another supplier. How on earth was Tesco to know that it's main supplier had either lied or been lied to?

Again - I avoid Tesco whenever I can but do you really believe most other supermarkets are any better?

Sorry, but yes I do. And particularly Waitrose, which has far better systems (and meat, for that matter) than Tesco for much the same price.

Tesco's practice is to drive the price it pays its suppliers down to such a level that they have to cut corners to make any profit, and this shows up time after time in the poor quality of its products. Hence the horsemeat, hence the non-British pork, and hence the differences between, for example, the sourcing of the bananas and chicken Tesco sell, as against the ones Sainsbury sell at the same price.

Tesco sold the pork, and they have to accept full responsibility for it - they can't just hide behind the supplier they chose to supply it.

PLRFD

Exactly Tesco are just trying to pass the blame on. They sell the product it's Tesco's responsibility.

ash28

Doc_N wrote: »

Sorry, but yes I do. And particularly Waitrose, which has far better systems (and meat, for that matter) than Tesco for much the same price.

Tesco's practice is to drive the price it pays its suppliers down to such a level that they have to cut corners to make any profit, and this shows up time after time in the poor quality of its products. Hence the horsemeat, hence the non-British pork, and hence the differences between, for example, the sourcing of the bananas and chicken Tesco sell, as against the ones Sainsbury sell at the same price.

Tesco sold the pork, and they have to accept full responsibility for it - they can't just hide behind the supplier they chose to supply it.

It's not just Waitrose, the Co-op sources all of it's pork, beef and chicken from British farms.....not through 3rd party suppliers. Their meat is good quality.....during late spring and summer their lamb is British and in the winter and early spring it's from New Zealand as fresh British isn't available then.

We live in a village with a smallish Co-op, I have absolutely no qualms about buying meat from there, they have a transparent supply chain unlike a some of the big boys.

I agree Tesco are responsible for their suppliers and can't hide behind them, it's their responsibility to make sure the supply chain can be traced.

I don't have an issue with eating pork raised in the Netherlands but I do have a problem when they tell us it's British........it's a bit like the horse meat issue, I have no objection in principle about eating horse meat, but I would like it to be my choice to do so not theirs.

LadyDee

Tesco was not the only supermarket involved in the horsemeat fiasco, and I don't believe their buyers sat round a table and discussed how to disguise horsemeat in their burgers, or discussed how to dupe their customers into buying pork which a company several steps back in the supply chain had mislabelled. Of course they will have to accept responsibility but that does necessarily mean they were initially at fault. If something is faulty you take it back to the retailer as it's his responsibility but the fault is with the manufacturer.

Every company's motive is to make a profit - even Waitrose. Waitrose might be a little more ethical than others but they all need to source cheap and sell high.

ash28

LadyDee wrote: »

I'm no fan of Tesco but come on - this meat was supplied by a company that guaranteed its meat was from UK. That company had bought it from another supplier. How on earth was Tesco to know that it's main supplier had either lied or been lied to?

Again - I avoid Tesco whenever I can but do you really believe most other supermarkets are any better?

Tesco is responsible for it's supply chain.....the supplier it bought the pork from is blaming a supplier it uses.....that supplier says it doesn't deal in meat from the Netherlands and is one of several companies that supply the main supplier.

The buck stops with Tesco. Some of the supermarkets are able to sell British meat sourced from British farms and not through 3rd party suppliers and they manage to sell at similar prices to Tesco......I know who I would rather buy from.

ash28

LadyDee wrote: »

Tesco was not the only supermarket involved in the horsemeat fiasco, and I don't believe their buyers sat round a table and discussed how to disguise horsemeat in their burgers, or discussed how to dupe their customers into buying pork which a company several steps back in the supply chain had mislabelled. Of course they will have to accept responsibility but that does necessarily mean they were initially at fault. If something is faulty you take it back to the retailer as it's his responsibility but the fault is with the manufacturer.

Every company's motive is to make a profit - even Waitrose. Waitrose might be a little more ethical than others but they all need to source cheap and sell high.

If every company took the line that Tesco has taken....not our fault gov....it's our suppliers, it could be pretty catastrophic.

I used to work in industry and looking after some our suppliers was part of my job, I had to work with them, make sure they were able to supply the right quantity, the right quality at the right price.....sampling their products, checking labelling, testing the products, you couldn't believe everything they told you....if they made a mistake they had to pay for it either by reworking the product or replacing the product or paying us to rework the product for them.....

The product we sold was our responsibility and if it was wrong and hurt someone the fact that one of our suppliers made a mistake wouldn't have been acceptable to either the end user or the authorities.

It seems the product was bought and sent for testing and the labelling of the product wasn't right.....easily done but easily rectified by procedures put in place by Tesco for it's suppliers....it's called traceability and control....they should be able to trace the origin of their products back to the source....if they can't or their suppliers (or some of their suppliers) can't or aren't adhering to procedures then they need to change suppliers.

If a company like Tesco decides to out source it's quality control to it's suppliers it can put the whole brand at risk......short term gains can have longer term consequences, each incident like this will damage the Tesco brand.

Some of the other food retailers don't use the type of supply chain Tesco use for their meat....their fresh meat is sourced from British farms and they manage to sell at similar prices to Tesco.

Doc_N

ash28 wrote: »

Some of the other food retailers don't use the type of supply chain Tesco use for their meat....their fresh meat is sourced from British farms and they manage to sell at similar prices to Tesco.

Very true. People seem so often to buy their meat from Tesco assuming that it's decent meat at a reasonable price.

In fact, it often proves quite the reverse - overpriced meat that isn't worth eating. There are far cheaper places than Tesco to buy meat (often the local butcher) and the quality is very unlikely to be lower - far more likely to be higher, indeed.

Time after time Tesco prove that they can't be trusted, but all the heavy advertising, lobbying, PR and other resources they can afford are used to somehow make the public feel positive about them. Maybe, just maybe, the tide is starting to turn just a little, and people are beginning to realise that for what they provide, they're actually very expensive.

It's the shareholders that benefit from the low prices they pay their suppliers - not their customers.

shoei

I am a horse lover but to be honest, I was more annoyed by this than the horse meat scandal, it is hard enough to track down british meat in Tesco without it being packaged wrong!

LadyDee

I am so thankful that I am vegetarian.