Tesco has defended its decision to sell whole chickens for less than £2, vowing that it is the grocer itself that shoulders the price cut.
The UK’s biggest grocer cut the price of a standard broiler chicken from£3.30 to£1.99 earlier this month in a bid to help cash-strapped shoppers keep their food bills down.
The move was condemned earlier this week by National Farmers Union (NFU) president Peter Kendall in a speech at the NFU’s annual conference in London.
Kendall said that selling chickens at such low prices sends “completely the wrong message” about the cost of producing traceable food.
Speaking at the same conference, Tesco executive director for corporate and legal affairs Lucy Neville-Rolfe defended the move. She said that the low price has not led to a relaxing of animal welfare standards and that Tesco, rather than the poultry industry, bore the cost of the price cut.
“Some say we are undoing progress on animal welfare and that, rather than cut prices, we should only sell free-range chickens,” she said.
“It’s true that we cut the price, but we bore the cost of that promotion ourselves. There was no reduction in animal welfare. Nor do I think it is right to say that we are undervaluing the product. The truth is that many families are tightening their belts and are looking for better value without a reduction in standards.”
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