Morrisons and Waitrose have become the latest supermarkets to back calls for the government to introduce mandatory reporting on the healthiness of products.
Last month, Tesco CEO Ken Murphy, in a joint letter with leading health charities, called on ministers to tackle the growing obesity crisis by forcing all supermarkets and large food businesses to report on the health of their sales.
Morrisons has now directly backed the call, with a spokeswoman saying it wanted a standard approach to “help to drive improved health outcomes”.
Waitrose said it was “open to a mandatory approach from the government” although it said “naturally, we’d want to see the detail of any proposals first”.
Asda first called for mandatory health reporting in 2023 and has now reiterated its support for the approach, to create a “level playing field” for the industry.
Tesco’s call, backed by its health charity partners Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK, is understood to be in discussion as part of the government’s new Food Strategy.
Tesco CEO Ken Murphy told The Grocer today: “We sincerely hope that the government will act on our call.
“We’ve been reporting on the health of our products voluntarily for some time now and it forms a key part of long-term targets for the executive team.
“So it’s something that we feel is very important.
“Once you start measuring what you are actually doing, it really brings to the surface what you do about it.
“We’ve taken action over a number of years to improve our percentage of healthy sales because it’s a metric we’re held accountable to. We just think it’s good for the industry and it’s good for suppliers.”
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