The Five Freedoms Ignored:
Aberdeen Group
Cruelty exposed
This photo is representative of the standard industrial farming practices permitted in the company’s supply chain.Photo: Andrew Skowron / We Animals
Aberdeen Group is one of the major investors in Tesco.
And as an investor in Tesco, Aberdeen Group is profiting from some of the worst animal cruelty in the global food industry.
From fish confined in crowded aquaculture systems for most of their lives, to animals exposed to stressful farming conditions that can lead to injury and disease, to slaughter practices that inflict prolonged and unnecessary suffering — these are the everyday realities behind Tesco’s seafood supply chain. Realities that Aberdeen Group is helping fund.
We reached out directly to Aberdeen Group, providing clear information of the cruelty they are enabling through their investment in Tesco. No response. No action. Just silence.
While responsible investors are pushing companies to modernize and eliminate outdated, abusive systems, Aberdeen Group is doing nothing. By continuing to back Tesco, they are sending a clear message: animal suffering is an acceptable price for returns.
They had a choice.
They still do.
But the longer they stay silent, the clearer it becomes — Aberdeen Group isn’t just standing by. They’re standing in the way of progress and humanity.
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.
