from Jonathan Church, external communications manager, Tesco
Sir; I was disappointed to see that your recent article on our new nut labelling initiative (‘Tesco nut policy could backfire’, July 23, p11) failed to recognise the significant improvements it will bring to many customers who suffer from nut allergies.
The new system unpacks the ambiguous ‘may contain nuts’ label currently used throughout the industry, by giving additional information on the recipe, ingredients and manufacture of products.
We have done a lot of research with our customers who are allergic to nuts, and the message that comes across clearly is that they need more details to establish if products are suitable for them.
Even if a supplier cannot guarantee the ingredients in a product are nut-free, there is more they can do to help customers have greater choice. By providing information on the recipe, which clarifies whether the product is supposed to have nuts in it and the manufacture, which states if the product is made in a nut-free area, they will be greatly improving what is currently available.
The support we have received from Allergy UK, Action Against Allergy and the Anaphylaxis Society for our scheme demonstrates this. They believe that we have gone further than any other mainstream retailer to address the problem of nut contamination.
We expect our suppliers to take this issue seriously and believe the vast majority of them share our objective to make life easier for this growing group of customers.
We make no apology for raising the standard of nut labelling across the whole industry and hope others will follow.
Sir; I was disappointed to see that your recent article on our new nut labelling initiative (‘Tesco nut policy could backfire’, July 23, p11) failed to recognise the significant improvements it will bring to many customers who suffer from nut allergies.
The new system unpacks the ambiguous ‘may contain nuts’ label currently used throughout the industry, by giving additional information on the recipe, ingredients and manufacture of products.
We have done a lot of research with our customers who are allergic to nuts, and the message that comes across clearly is that they need more details to establish if products are suitable for them.
Even if a supplier cannot guarantee the ingredients in a product are nut-free, there is more they can do to help customers have greater choice. By providing information on the recipe, which clarifies whether the product is supposed to have nuts in it and the manufacture, which states if the product is made in a nut-free area, they will be greatly improving what is currently available.
The support we have received from Allergy UK, Action Against Allergy and the Anaphylaxis Society for our scheme demonstrates this. They believe that we have gone further than any other mainstream retailer to address the problem of nut contamination.
We expect our suppliers to take this issue seriously and believe the vast majority of them share our objective to make life easier for this growing group of customers.
We make no apology for raising the standard of nut labelling across the whole industry and hope others will follow.
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