Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King has called on the food industry to use a universal front of pack nutritional labelling system.
Speaking at this year’s IGD Convention, King said that adopting multiple traffic lights (MTLs) and Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) is now crucial in building trust with consumers.
“Trust in businesses from the UK public is currently at 40 per cent, I don’t see too many better ways of boosting their trust than the issue of health,” explained King.
Sainsbury’s introduced GDAs to fresh produce labelling seven years ago, with 9,000 of the supermarket’s lines overall now carrying the ‘Wheel of Health’ MLT labelling, and King says 80 per cent of the British public use the labelling to eat more healthily.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give customers a unified approach that makes it easier for them to make healthier eating choices,” explained King.
The new EU Provision of Food Information to Consumers Regulation will require all UK food manufacturers and retailers to change their labelling from 2014, and others to begin nutritional lebelling for the first time from 2016 with the Department of Health starting to provide guidance on the legislation from next year.
King also openly critcised the government’s plans to introduce an ‘owner-employee’ contract scheme, which allows employees shares of the company they work for in exchange for basic rights including dismissal and redundancy. He said the system, which was revealed at the Conservative Conference in Birmingham earlier this week, represented a continuation of the government not supporting the major retailers.
“A big percentage of our customers said that the way we treat our employees is key to their trust in the brand so it's hard for us to increase customer loyalty when the government is taking the basic rights of employees away,” said King.
The Sainsbury’s boss believes that the lack of UK legislation to date behind a universal nutritional packaging system is proof of politicians' lack of trust in Sainsbury's and other major retailers.
He continued: “Plastic bag tax, health levy, and the debate on minimum pricing are all examples of politicians not trusting us; if we are to improve the industry and our relationships with suppliers, the government must start to work more closely with us.”
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