The New Dark Age

Last Wednesday, June 10, Zoe Mars and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, representing PSC’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions working group, had an hour-long meeting with Tesco’s Corporate Responsibility director Ruth Girardet and a member of her staff. This is a report of the meeting:

The Tesco representatives were keen to demonstrate that they were listening to our concerns, although they stressed several times that this was a “sensitive subject” and they would also be listening to people with quite different opinions. We took this as a hint that they have customers who lobby for more Israeli goods, including those from settlements.

We explained that the boycott campaign targets Israel as a whole and would do so as long as Israel acts with impunity, defying international law and human rights conventions. However, in this meeting we were concerned mainly to address the question of goods from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They acknowledged that they do stock such goods.

We referred to a bundle of documents that we had submitted in advance to bear out our case. These included Foreign and Commonwealth Office statements that settlements are illegal and obstacles to peace, and legal advice from Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights showing that the current practise of offering such goods for sale with a “West Bank” label was misleading to customers and potentially criminal. We pointed out that the Co-op and M&S had ceased trading in settlement goods. This was clearly news to them.

Tesco’s position was that their fundamental responsibility is to provide choice to customers. They stressed that they comply with the law, they do not make it, but at the same time their core value is “to treat people as we would like to be treated”. We made little progress when we pointed out the gross injustice of the treatment of Palestinians, who had been dispossessed and whose land and water resources are being illegally exploited while their own economy had been throttled. They did not want to address any political questions.

However, they were willing to examine evidence of substandard labour conditions in the settlement farms, which we have presented to them.

We questioned their assertion that labour conditions were regularly checked by “independent auditors” and they undertook to review to what extent genuine independence was possible and being achieved.

At present they maintain that ‘West Bank’ is the prevailing and appropriate label for settlement goods. They said Tesco was represented at the recent roundtable discussion on this issue organised by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and heard the forthright views expressed there on behalf of OXFAM and LPHR. They realise there are possible legal issues and exposure to prosecution on misleading labelling. If government advice changes and if their lawyers advise, they will adopt new labelling practices – but only then. They said the ‘produce of Israel’ Tesco labels shown in an ITN film from Tomer settlement was a mistake they have since corrected. They are aware of customs issues raised by the fact that Israeli produce can enter the European Union tariff free (something we oppose) while good from settlements have to pay.

They claimed that Tesco imports from so many different agricultural suppliers, changing week by week depending on seasonal availability and demand, that they could not provide a list of all suppliers (even if commercial confidentiality allowed). But they claimed that they could trace any given item to its source, if asked. We questioned how they could be sure of the exact origin of goods supplied by agents such as Carmel Agrexco and they acknowledged that this required investigation.

We raised with them the possibility of offering their customers the choice of buying Fair Trade Palestinian products such as Zaytoun olive oil, pointing out that some Co-op stores were already doing this. We offered to send information and samples and they agreed to consider it.

They were proud to discuss at some length many examples of occasions when Tesco DID limit choice and tailor its labelling, in order to meet environmental, health or ethical concerns. These apply, for example, to tuna fishing, fat, sugar and salt content of food and labour conditions covered by the Ethical Trading Initiative. They gave the example of goods from Sudan which they had ceased to handle because they could not guarantee that child labour was not being used by the suppliers.

Asked if they could see the ambiguity in their position on West Bank goods, the response was “it depends where the consumer is coming from”.

Although this was a useful first meeting and Tesco gave us assurances that they would follow up some specific points of detail, they clearly intend to continue stocking Israeli goods and settlement produce.

We left them with the understanding that our protests will continue unabated and that they risk a legal challenge for complicity in Israel’s criminal behaviour.