The Five Freedoms Ignored:
Tesco
Cruelty exposed
This photo is representative of the standard industrial farming practices permitted in the company’s supply chain.Photo: Andrew Skowron / We Animals
Christine Heffernan is the Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer of Tesco, one of the most influential names in the global food industry. With that power comes responsibility — not just to shareholders, but to the living beings who suffer every single day to keep Tesco’s supply chain running.
Knows that fish in Tesco’s supply chain are being packed into overcrowded, filthy waters where their bodies can become riddled with deformities and open sores from sea lice and other irritants to being cut open while alive and fully conscious — all so the company can shave a few cents off the cost of a meal. Knows that the same cruel systems deemed unacceptable in many parts of the world are still being used where oversight is weakest and voices are easiest to ignore. Knows that many competitors have moved forward, leaving Tesco behind, clinging to practices the public no longer tolerates.
While Tesco claims to care about animal welfare, its silence and inaction tell a different story. The Five Freedoms — the basic standards that every animal should be guaranteed — are still denied to millions of animals in Tesco’s supply chain.
A single executive decision could end some of the worst suffering in industrial farming — suffering that’s been documented, condemned, and condemned again. But instead of action, we get empty statements. Instead of change, we get delay. Instead of leadership, we get complicity.
This isn’t about perfection.
It’s about decency.
And decency is a choice.
It’s time for Christine Heffernan to make the right one.
Fish and crustaceans in Tesco’s supply chain can face a brutal existence.
At factory farm seafood facilities allowed in the company’s supply chain, animals can be packed into overcrowded, filthy waters where fish’s bodies can become riddled with deformities and open sores from sea lice and other irritants.
Disease is allowed to run rampant, with a large percentage of animals suffering to death from disease before even making it to slaughter.
Wild-caught fish in Tesco’s supply chain face similar cruelty. Tesco has no public policy prohibiting cruel and environmentally devastating capture methods from being used.
Methods such as trawling and longlining can kill large numbers of bycatch animals, damage local ecosystems, and lead to painful and prolonged suffering as animals linger for days jammed in nets or dangling on hooks.
The slaughter process is no less horrific. Tesco allows its seafood suppliers to kill animals in the most brutal ways possible, including cutting them open while alive and fully conscious, cooking them while alive and fully conscious, slowly asphyxiating them, or beating them to death.
Tesco has the power and responsibility to stop permitting these extreme cruelties in its supply chain. The public expects better, and animals deserve to live free from this egregious and unnecessary suffering.
It’s time for Tesco to do what many other leading supermarkets chains have already done and put policies in place that ensure the Five Freedoms for animals in its supply chain.
