Sainsbury’s Open Letter Update

On the 21st March 2024, Rob Verkerk PhD, penned an Open Letter to the CEO of Sainbury’s questioning the company’s position on the introduction of human food products derived from genetic technology-based ‘precision bred organisms’, regenerative and agro-ecological farming techniques and whether it’s in support of the UK’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023.

Many of you also wrote to Sainsbury’s to express your thoughts and views on the topics raised in the letter. Thank you also to those of you who shared your emails and the responses you received with us.

Dr Verkerk received a reply to the Open Letter, sent to Sainsbury’s CEO, Simon Roberts, earlier this month. The reply didn’t come from Mr Roberts himself, instead the task was delegated to Claire Roberts, Head of Quality and Innovation, who was copied into the communication sent to Mr Roberts.

The response received is shown below. Click here to download the PDF of the letter.

As you will see the letter carefully skirts around the issues raised in our Open Letter and doesn’t directly answer the questions raised. The same is true of the responses received by supporters, which consist mostly of platitudes that don’t give direct answers to the issues raised.

Ultimately, it seems Sainsbury’s will go where it thinks the profits lie, whether that be by working with nature to protect the environment to produce healthy plants and animals or with factories producing new-to-nature foods, with little to no safety data on their effects on both humans and the environment, their impact on the environment through energy and resource usage, not to mention the genetic meddling taking place to create organisms previously unknown to nature, in order to feed, what is now, a rapidly declining global population.

As always, the choice to vote with our wallets lies with each one of us.

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