Marks & Spencer announced its support for UK sourced organic food declaring its industry-leading achievement that 60% of its organic range is from the UK - a higher declared figure than any other food multiple.
Marks & Spencer announced its achievement in sourcing organic foods from the UK at a meeting with Marks & Spencer farmers and growers at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, Builth Wells.
The retailer's achievement comes ahead of the long-awaited Organic Action Plan, to be launched by DEFRA Minister Elliot Morley, to look at ways to develop organic food and farming. A key element of this plan is to challenge retailers to sell more UK produced organic products.
Last autumn, Marks & Spencer set out to fundamentally re-think its approach to organic foods and set itself a number of tough challenges that would enable it to increase the proportion of UK sourced raw materials, such as milk, to support the UK organic food industry. As a result, Marks & Spencer has been able to dramatically increase the proportion of UK grown and reared organic products with the introduction of new ranges of British organic cheese, yogurt and ice cream as well as new pork products.
By October 2002, Marks & Spencer will have completed the first phase of its organic programme, offering customers 160 products ranging from dairy products like butter, yoghurt and cheese, fruit and vegetables, salmon, sliced meats, joints and sausages through to ice creams and sorbets, wines and complete ready meals too. David Gregory, Head of Food Technology at Marks & Spencer, comments: "Our customers are asking for more UK produced organic food and as our industry leading figure demonstrates, we're leading the field in achieving this. In addition, we've also established a long-term research programme to investigate ways in which more of our organic food can be grown in the UK".
"Unlike other retailers, Marks & Spencer is 100% own brand, which means we can guarantee the standards to which all our food is produced and work in unique partnership with our organic farmers and growers to develop our products. The Marks & Spencer brand brings reassurance to our customers because we're passionate about the quality and standards of the products we sell."
"Sixty per cent of our organic products are grown in the UK and we'll continue to look for ways to increase this giving our customers choice and demonstrating our commitment to the UK organic market."
For further information, please contact:
Victoria Molyneux, Food Press Office 020 7268 6891
