Boycott Tesco Over Chicken Welfare, MPs Urge
UK - A group of Members of Parliament from all political parties is discouraging consumers from buying chicken from Tesco until the supermarket giant improves welfare conditions.
9 July 2008
2 minute read
The move follows the decision by Tesco shareholders last month to reject a call from a well-known chef to upgrade the store's minimum chicken rearing conditions to those of the Freedom Food standards of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the Yorkshire Post reports.
Twenty-six Members of Parliament (MPs) signed the Commons motion yesterday. Liberal Democrat Bob Russell urged all food retailers to adopt the Freedom Food standards regarding chicken welfare. He added that consumers should not buy chicken from Tesco until it did so.
The motion called on the Government to make the RSPCA standard a legal requirement.
Television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had tabled a resolution at Tesco's annual general meeting last month to force the change but the resolution, which needed the approval of at least 75 per cent of shareholders to be passed, won less than 10 per cent of the vote.
The Yorkshire Post reported Tesco's insistence that it goes beyond the minimum legal standards for chicken rearing and that all its farms are independently audited.
