Sainsbury's Drop Prince Charles Organic Carrots

Wed, 27 Jun 2007

UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's has dropped the Prince of Wales and the head of the Soil Association as vegetable suppliers because it says their produce did not meet expected standards.

The retailer yesterday said it had stopped accepting bags of Duchy Carrots, grown at Prince Charles's Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, because of 'quality problems, mainly rot' .

Organic food campaigner and head of the Soil Association Patrick Holden was also dumped after supplying carrots to Sainsbury's for more than 20 years, claiming his vegetables were not up to standard.

The move has incensed Patrick Holden who has accused leading supermarkets of being so obsessed with uniform, pristine-looking vegetables rather than natural and tasty produce.

Mr Holden said he believes that he and Prince Charles have become victims of the supermarket system's industrial processes and imposed food miles.

He stated his own organic carrots had to be driven at least 500 miles from his farm in Wales to a processing plant in East Anglia to be cleaned and sorted in giant washing machines before they were driven back to Wales to be sold as 'local' food in Sainsbury's.

Mr Holden added that his vegetables were of the highest quality when harvested, but through a combination of long-distance transport, handling and further storage, the vegetables were left damaged and prone to rot .

"Everyone who has supplied a supermarket own label will have a story similar to mine to tell but most daren't tell it for fear of being delisted. This is not confined to one supermarket. It is the unintentional consequence of the centralised supermarket distribution system," he commented.